Latest Reports

In addition to massive grain processing and storage facilities, Kansas State University’s O.H. Kruse Feed Technology Innovation Center also contains a 1,200-sf BSL-2 lab for studying food-borne pathogens. The three-story high-bay Cargill Feed Safety Research Center (FSRC) is the only facility in the United States approved for feed-related research involving such pathogenic agents as Salmonella and E. coli. Previously, the University was not permitted to intentionally contaminate livestock feed with live pathogens because of the safety requirements.

The research infrastructure department at the Biodesign Institute, Arizona State University’s showcase research center, employs a dedicated facilities service organization with considerable in-house expertise, and granular benchmarking tools that track utilities and facilities costs in multiple categories of lab space, from LEED-certified green building features to general wet labs to secure ABSL-3 labs with a select agent program. In a state-sponsored research environment, where operating costs can go as high as $170 per net sf, optimizing building efficiency is critical.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is changing medical delivery and funding streams, with an impact on business models, institutional and facility planning, capital projects, asset utilization, and strategic positioning for healthcare facilities. Meeting the challenge of delivering high-quality, low-cost healthcare will require determining the fee-for-value proposition behind these changes—how the cost of changing healthcare services affects quality outcomes, and ways to measure these outcomes, says Anthony Roesch, director of healthcare consulting for HOK in New York. Healthcare organizations will increasingly look to mergers and acquisitions, as well as new partnerships, to limit costs and prolong the life of aging facilities, as the ACA forces them to shift from a fee-for-service financing model to a quality-of-care, outcomes-based model. Rather than all treatment being delivered at the hub, or hospital setting, the new model leverages services available in the community to cover an entire region or state. 

The four-story, 104,000-sf Undergraduate Teaching Laboratories building at Johns Hopkins University consolidates under one roof undergraduate labs and faculty from the departments of chemistry, biology, biophysics, and psychological and brain sciences, and the undergraduate neuroscience program. The facility connects to Mudd Hall and completes the fourth side of the Mudd/Levi/Biology complex, replacing aging lab space—much of it underground with poor circulation and sightlines and no natural light—spread throughout campus.

The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) has crafted a decision-making framework based on objective standards to identify and pursue the highest priorities in a massive building boom that has roughly 95 projects valued from $10,000 to $450 million currently under construction. While a large part of that activity stems from the university’s long-range master plan, a significant portion was necessitated by the devastation of Hurricane Ike, which took 1.2 million sf of the medical school’s Galveston campus out of service in 2008.