Dive Brief:

• In New York City, a 54-story office building at 55 Water St. in the Financial District has redundancies and backups to keep its tenants operating during disasters, and now it has a flood-protection system engineered to ward off 8-foot waters.
• The system was designed after Sandy, the super storm that hammered the Northeast in October 2012, flood streets, subways and power systems in Manhattan.
• Designed by HLW International and installed by Plaza Construction, the "bathtub" system can be taken from basement storage and erected by 30 workers in eight hours, and it fits with the building's aesthetics.

Dive Insight:

With 3.8 million square feet of office space, the building has a lot of tenants to protect from weather-related interruptions. The owner, New Water Street Corporation, has redundancies for all major systems and says tenants can keep operating for days when conventional systems are interrupted. The 8-foot design is based on government recommendations for 7.5-foot protection for the next century.