The main entrance lobby of Amicus Therapeutics, located in Philadelphia, includes views to the lab space and to Penn Medicine to connect visitors to University City’s surging biotech ecosystem. (Credit: CRB)
Truly state-of-the-art lab facilities don’t exist in a vacuum. They’re a function of factors big and small, from internal design choices to external funding and talent retention. Increasingly, a holistic approach to the project, one that considers its context and stakeholder needs at early stages of planning, is needed for a facility to be competitive long term.
At CRB, we call this approach the Lab Ecosystem. As in nature, there are key qualities that maintain the ecosystem’s functioning, and extend beyond the physical blueprint. Asking yourself some of the following questions can help ensure you’re building up an ecosystem that has the resources, adaptability, habitat, and resilience to thrive.
Resources
Can your lab facility readily access the things it needs to thrive?
- proximity to supply vendors
- maintenance personnel and equipment repair
- efficient flow for receivables and waste management
- adequate clearance and elevators for supplies
A healthy ecosystem needs adequate resources to thrive. The support system for a physical lab facility helps maintain an effective research environment. The more easily your facility can be accessed by deliveries, maintenance, and repairs, the more efficiently the lab ecosystem will operate.
Availability and efficiency of resources is a consideration for your facility both inside and outside of the physical building. The availability of local maintenance personnel and equipment vendors in your area can greatly affect the timeline and cost of the service they provide. In addition, the absence of reliable access to these services can greatly impair the work of those working within the labs.
Once inside the facility, the transportation of materials is greatly affected by the infrastructure and workflow design of the building. There are many aspects to a lab, such as personnel, waste, material, and equipment, which are important for an efficient workflow. For example, deliveries and large equipment require a freight elevator that has appropriate clearances and weight capacities for science. Otherwise, you may find yourself hoisting lab equipment through an exterior window, which is a poor use of time, resources, and sanity. Consider implementing separate flows for staff, visitors, deliveries, and waste.
Adaptability
Is your lab campus prepared for unique science and changing needs?
- flexible lab usage
- modular layout
- subject matter expertise
A good understanding of your local market can help guide your design strategy insofar as the features you decide to include in your lab ecosystem. Cell and gene therapy labs will require a different balance ofwet labs and dry labs than food innovation labs, for example.
That said, accelerating technology and innovation means that the required features of a lab space are rapidly evolving. More spaces are using bioinformatics and artificial intelligence to conduct research that was traditionally done in a physical wet lab, for example. Luckily, when designed appropriately, a space can be converted between a wet lab and a dry lab. By considering and building in the capacity to host either type of lab, you can make the lab ecosystem better able to evolve with the changing landscape of diverse fields of studies.
Another design element that can dramatically impact the adaptability of the space is the layout and floor plan. Your facility needs the structural integrity to support heavy duty equipment, and also the flexibility necessary for resident scientists to use their space most effectively. Wherever possible, aim for a column-free layout so that the layout can remain modular for the client.
There are hundreds of types of specialized lab spaces, all with different changing needs. That’s why we engage our subject matter experts at every stage, bringing an understanding of not only the current technical best practices to employ in a lab ecosystem, but also a knowledgeability of trends and forecasts for various fields.
Habitat
Is your facility well-positioned to host high profile work and facilitate collaboration?
- proximity to potential collaborators and relevant institutions
- central and accessible location
- features that improve work-life balance
The availability of resources for your lab ecosystem has a lot to do with the location. Proximity to major academic institutions and manufacturing can make the process of funding and maintaining tenancy in a lab space much more feasible. It opens up more opportunities for collaboration with nearby academics and professionals.
Today’s workforce emphasizes work life balance, unwilling to sacrifice quality of life for a prestigious job. Lab buildings have a reputation for being located in faraway industrial parks: difficult to access and unsightly. Initiating a project in a more central, desirable place makes it easier for prospective tenant companies to attract great talent and do great work. At a macro level, more companies lately are staying put or returning to their home cities, no longer limited to the coasts exclusively. Typically, this means a lower cost of living and less disruption for talent, and helps retain high value clients in your lab ecosystem.
Features of the building itself can also contribute to the quality of life of the scientists who work there. Things like built-in gym facilities and outdoor space, which may seem small, make a large and lasting impact on staff morale over time. Consider features like these at the planning stage to make spaces that people can get excited about working in.
Resilience
Is your lab ecosystem equipped to handle emergencies with minimal disruption?
- mechanical, electrical and plumbing
- hazardous material storage capacity
- emergency generators
Predictable, reliable functioning is the best-case scenario in any ecosystem. However, the reality of the lab ecosystem is that accidents and emergencies do occur. The objective is to develop an ecosystem that prevents them, and can handle disruption with limited impact to the scientists or their work.
Building resilience into your lab ecosystem means designing for safety in the early stages. Adequate vibration control, for example, protects the building and its contents from vibrations caused by heavy machinery or the outside world.
Factoring in the storage of hazardous materials is another important measure in accident prevention and safety. Incorporating storage, transportation and ventilation systems for the appropriate sequestering of these materials at the design stage of your build can help avoid contamination, and costly retrofitting down the line.
Lastly, invest in modular mechanical, electric and plumbing systems at the outset. The demands on these systems in a lab setting are unique, and therefore require a greater capacity for airflow, water, power and waste disposal. Building this capacity at the core and shell level of design will enable your ecosystem to be more able to scale and adapt. Collaborating with experts in the design and planning will help ensure the inclusion of emergency preparedness features like standby generators. In case of emergency power outages, these measures may potentially protect millions of dollars of investment in product.
The lab ecosystem has to serve unique and evolving needs for a variety of different stakeholders. We believe that attention to the ecosystem’s resources, adaptability, habitat, and resilience are helpful guiding principles in meeting the objectives of all the system's stakeholders.
A holistic view of the ecosystem early on in the project, and collaboration with a design-to-build team, will result in a safe, functional and exciting building for personnel and investors alike.
About the Author: Mark Paskanik, AIA, is a talented lab planner and licensed architect. With a focus on the lab ecosystem, Mark strives to make each lab successful through a holistic approach of examining the support system of the lab beyond its walls while understanding industry best practices to attract the best and brightest employees. He has over 20 years of experience programming, planning, and designing research facilities worldwide, and in that time, he has planned over 20 million square feet of laboratory projects ranging from wet lab to dry lab with specialties in BSL, GMP, and vivaria. Mark is a member of Labcompare's Editorial Advisory Board.