Latest Reports

As organizations navigate evolving work models and funding landscapes, strategic facility adaptation has emerged as a core competency. Forward-thinking planners are now formulating space strategies and infrastructure investments that deliver immediate operational value while building long-term flexibility into their portfolios. These dual-impact approaches—addressing today's needs while anticipating tomorrow's requirements—are reshaping how institutions, corporations, and government entities are approaching facility planning. The most-read Tradeline reports from 2025 reflect this shift toward adaptive, future-ready facilities.

The Oregon State University College of Engineering is embarking on a transformative journey to optimize space, enhance research capacity, and create a cohesive environment for students and faculty. Through strategic planning, innovative redesigns, and an emphasis on community engagement, OSU is redefining how legacy buildings can serve modern needs without massive new construction. A major focus of the 10-year plan centers on the university’s “engineering triangle,” a cluster of historic buildings dedicated to engineering research and education. These century-old buildings, while rich in history, are in desperate need of modernization to support the university’s cutting-edge research. While previous years have seen new construction, the next phase will focus on preserving and enhancing existing spaces.

Faced with growing demand to do more with less, animal laboratory managers are looking for opportunities to drive greater efficiencies. One way forward is the use of digitalization to improve energy efficiency as well as asset and space utilization. But tight budgets, the need to improve data collection and analysis, and insufficient numbers of staff trained to operate the new systems are all holding back adoption, according to experts at Siemens Smart Infrastructure. 

It’s no secret that many healthcare organizations are struggling to attract and keep enough staff to look after their patients. New space plans are offering solutions to the staffing challenge that increase healthcare worker satisfaction and success by making it easier for them to do their job. Not all staffing considerations are building-related, but there are many ways the building can work to help doctors, nurses, therapists, and aides do their jobs more effectively while maintaining their own physical and mental health. That balance is attractive to healthcare workers.

When it was proposed in 2019, repurposing underutilized space at the University of Georgia for an industry partner’s fermentation lab appeared to be a good deal for everyone involved. It was a win for the pharmaceutical company that wanted to contract with the university to help it develop new products and needed a fermentation lab that met, at a minimum, biosafety level 2 (BSL-2) standards. It was a plus for staff at the university’s Bioexpression and Fermentation Facility who would perform the work. It represented an advance for the university that wanted to form new industry relationships and had available space at its Athens, Ga. campus inside the Animal Health Research Center (AHRC). And it was a win for the AHRC, a 75,000-sf biocontainment facility that would host a new industry partner in addition to other laboratories performing BSL-2, animal biosafety level 2 (ABSL-2), biosafety level 3 (BSL-3), animal biosafety level 3 (ABSL-3), and animal biosafety level 3-agricultural (ABSL-3Ag) research work.