Egis Real Estate Services

Specialty: Engineering and facility service management
Management: Tom Ripley, Chris Holden, Charles Wright, Ed Doyne, Tina Pappas
Founded: 2003
Headquarters: Seattle
Current projects: Metropolitan Tower, West 8th, Adhost DataCenter

Tina Pappas

Egis Real Estate Services wears a lot of hats.

The Seattle-based company provides mechanical and maintenance engineering services for buildings in the Puget Sound region. It also does property management and leasing, project management, and real estate consulting — all for landlords — and helps owners and tenants obtain LEED certification for their buildings or spaces.

The engineering work is its niche, said Egis President Tina Pappas. A total of 32 of its 60 employees are mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineers who service building equipment such as heating, ventilation, air-conditioning and electrical systems, as well as data centers.

Data centers are used to house computer systems and associated components. Egis maintains the centers and ensures their reliability, said Denton Phillips, business development director with the firm.

Image courtesy of Egis Real Estate Services Egis Real Estate Services wears many hats, such as providing engineering services for data centers. Adhost DataCenter in Seattle is one of the firm’s clients.

“It’s a special environment that’s a little more critical than your typical office building,” he said.

For landlords who don’t want the centers on-site, Egis can arrange for them to lease space in Fisher Plaza, Pappas said. If power goes out in the city, Fisher Plaza has backup generators to keep the centers going, she said.

More businesses are choosing to locate data centers off-site, she said. They may want the space for other office functions or, more likely, their building doesn’t have the power and cooling systems necessary for the centers, she said.

Centralized mechanical systems

Another trend Egis is seeing is more new residential and mixed-use buildings are being constructed with the important systems — from electrical to water — in a centralized location, rather than in each unit, Pappas said. The centralization allows for more efficient management of the systems, she said.

In the project management arena, Egis oversees tenant improvements or work within entire buildings. With the I-405 Corporate Center in Bellevue, for instance, Pappas said it evaluated the mechanical systems and ensured that fixtures were removed. It also added equipment needed by the tenant.

Going green

Egis is also involved in the green aspect of real estate. For instance, it helped the Vulcan Real Estate and Pemco Insurance-owned Alley24 obtain silver LEED certification. Additionally, it aided Alley24 tenants Skanska and NBBJ obtain gold LEED certification for their tenant improvements in the mixed-used building, Pappas said.