Industry News

Purdue University will break ground in fall of 2008 on an $11 million expansion of the Ray W. Herrick Laboratories in West Lafayette, Ind.  The new facility will double the lab’s existing footprint of 27,500-sf to provide a total of 52,000-sf. The first phase of the project will be comprised of 16,000-sf for the Perception-Based Engineering Laboratory and the Cummins Engine Laboratory. Housing offices and experimental facilities for over 100 faculty, graduate students, and staff, the project will feature noise and vibration mitigation technologies.

Highland Hospital will initiate construction in early 2009 on a $682 million acute care tower in Oakland, Calif. Replacing Highland’s existing inpatient facility, the 230,000-sf project will create a nine-story, seismically sound replacement tower with 160 beds.

Ark Therapeutics Group opened a $19.1 million GMP-3 manufacturing facility in Kuopio, Finland, in July of 2008. The commercial scale production plant is connected to Ark's existing laboratory suites and will manufacture gene-based medicines. The BSL-2 facility features a 547-sm cleanroom with HEPA air filtration. The duration of construction for the project was three years.

Washington County Health System broke ground in spring of 2008 on a 511,000-sf hospital in Hagerstown, Md.  Sited adjacent to Robinwood Medical Center, the facility will be comprised of three towers and is slated for completion in November of 2010. The $294 million hospital will include 297 private patient rooms, 53 emergency treatment rooms, 17 operating rooms, two cardiac rooms, and two trauma rooms.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has awarded San Francisco-based URS Corp. a $90 million contract to design and build two medical instruction facilities at Fort Sam Houston in Texas. As part of the Medical Education and Training Campus (METC), the buildings will provide training for military personnel in radiology, pharmacy, nuclear medicine, biomedical equipment technology, and dentistry.