Sessions

Don’t settle for “quick fix” renovations that can limit long-term performance; relatively small, well-considered moves can transform a project from basic accommodation into a cohesive, forward-looking environment. Presenters use a series of STEM renovation case studies, including Brown University, to demonstrate the decision-making criteria that reconcile program, circulation, and identity to turn constrained existing buildings into cohesive, high-performing academic environments. They illustrate the results including modernized laboratories, spatial relationships fostering student collaboration, intuitive wayfinding that contribute to improved user experience, and facilities well-positioned to evolve as needs change.

With tariff policy and energy costs in flux and the Federal Reserve continuing rate changes, capital planners face a pressing question: How much escalation should owners budget for projects breaking ground in the next few years? The Vermeulens team analyzes leading indicators—equities, GDP, job creation, oil, lumber, copper, and steel—alongside construction volumes and labor productivity to model how tariff and monetary policy will reshape pricing structures. They deliver a regional construction labor weather map identifying where capacity is tightest, and two-year escalation scenarios by region. They illustrate practical methods for setting design, escalation, bidding, and construction contingencies and controlling delivered costs across micro and macroeconomic environments. 

Most research universities carry an inventory of aging, mission-critical science and engineering buildings that no longer serve evolving programs and that hide big deferred maintenance liabilities. Drawing on precinct plans and renewal strategies developed for leading institutions, presenters synthesize the patterns that consistently drive successful outcomes. They deliver a streamlined, repeatable framework for assessing building viability—comparing reinvestment versus replacement, creating defensible cases for full rebuild, and aligning scope, cost, and phasing with long-term research goals. They provide a proven toolkit for creating condition assessments, decision matrices, and constrained-environment funding strategies. 

When a facility cannot go offline, renovation demands more than good design—it demands a delivery model built for sustained complexity. An occupied renovation spanning more than a decade, including high-containment laboratory environments, puts that model on full display. Speakers representing owner, user agency, designer, and construction manager walk through design strategies for a severely constrained facility, complex phasing and logistics, evolving project management approaches, and the communication and trust-building that kept the project moving through a global pandemic and beyond. They provide lessons learned on design flexibility, GMP development, project evolution, and management strategies required to address extensive unforeseen conditions.

As institutions weigh renovation against new construction, strategic reinvestment in aging facilities offers a more sustainable, cost-effective, and faster path forward — especially on historic campuses where preserving building stock is an institutional priority. Presenters draw on six renovation projects including from Boston University and Bowdoin College to examine how requirements are reshaping facility investment decisions. They share frameworks for evaluating renovation versus replacement, describe technical, logistical, and financial strategies for extending the life of spaces, and outline how targeted upgrades support faculty recruitment. They deliver key investment criteria and decision rationales for other institutions managing aging portfolios.

The shortcomings of early-to-mid-20th-century science buildings are well known—limited flexibility, low floor-to-floor heights, and failing infrastructure—but the most expensive surprises remain hidden until demolition. Undocumented hazardous materials, framing not designed for modern mechanical loads, floors failing vibration-sensitive stiffness, seismic shortfalls, record drawings that disagree with reality, and slabs with significant slope or deflection routinely emerge when design options have narrowed. Presenters distill lessons from multiple case studies and illustrate practical strategies for identifying and quantifying risk early through targeted investigations, laser scanning, and coordinated design—reducing the surprises that drive change orders, schedule slip, and budget pressure during construction.

The most unlikely existing spaces can become high-performing research environments when project drivers, existing conditions, and program priorities are aligned – what untapped value exists in your current portfolio? Presenters use multiple repurposing case studies to illustrate how vibration control, environmental stability, and phasing shape what is possible inside aging shells. They demonstrate how to perform rigorous evaluations including 3D scanning, condition assessment, and separating key requirements from "nice-to-have" to create a definitive programming strategy. They progress through construction-phase strategies for renovating older buildings without reliable as-builts: tactics for managing unforeseen conditions, controlling cost and schedule risk, and minimizing disruption inside occupied buildings throughout phased lab transformations and reactivation. 

A flat, gray, unglamorous expense at the top of the building usually sits at the bottom of every capital priority list—until water finds the lobby or lab renovation below it. Don’t let that happen to your organization! A well-timed roof replacement is a force multiplier; a deferred one is a ticking clock on every downstream investment. In this session, presenters translate building science into business case: red flags that signal a roof is approaching end-of-life, financial and operational arguments that win against competing capital priorities, principles of moisture management, thermal performance and material compatibility that define "doing it right," and sequencing strategies that align roofing with broader campus capital plans.

Successful adaptive reuse aligns mission, academic vision, real estate strategy, regulatory requirements, and project delivery from day one. The Chicago School evaluated more than 100 sites before selecting a historic urban building whose character, daylight, and context offered both opportunity and constraint for a forward-looking integrated health sciences campus. Session leaders demonstrate the navigation of project and accreditation requirements for the Illinois College of Osteopathic Medicine, including simulation- and collaboration-driven pedagogies, curriculum-driven space utilization analyses. They illustrate solutions that reconcile historic building realities with the demands of simulation centers, standardized patient labs, and advanced teaching environments through tight collaboration among owner, architect, contractor, faculty, students, and specialty consultants.

This case study is a deep dive into how interdisciplinary collaboration from the start resulted in dramatic energy and carbon reductions for an existing brutalist classroom building with historic designation. Presenters relate how the project team solved the challenge of delivering high-performance outcomes within the limited budget of a public project while maintaining the integrity of the architectural expression. They detail the iterative analysis that set up a former energy hog classroom building at UMass Dartmouth to achieve a significant 68% reduction in energy use intensity from 133 kBTU/sf/year to the predicted 40 kBTU/sf/year, and carbon savings of 63% with a customized bundle of strategies.