Latest Reports

The seven-story, 310,000-gsf Life Science Laboratories (LSL) building at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the first interdisciplinary science building on the flagship campus, provides dry, damp, and wet lab space for a wide range of disciplines, from physics and engineering (dry) to biology and environmental science (damp) to chemical engineering and chemistry (wet).

The University of Toledo’s Interprofessional Immersive Simulation Center is equipped with an i-Space™—the world’s first five-sided seamless LED virtual reality center for medical training, education, and research—and a virtual hospital outfitted with human patient simulators, state-of-the-art clinical equipment, and observation, control and debriefing rooms. The five-sided CAVE required a four-inch-thick glass floor weighing two tons.

Efficiency measures adopted as part of its 2012-2017 strategic plan are forecast to save the University of Kansas–Lawrence Campus (KU) a combined $5.5 million in the areas of construction, facilities operations, and maintenance in a single fiscal year. Specific changes include consolidating maintenance organizations for better coordination and prioritization, refining best practices in both construction and financial management, and developing new revenue streams.

A new animal facility at the University of Massachusetts Medical School features more efficient cage handling and cleaning, interstitial catwalks for maintenance, and a dual-corridor layout that minimizes contamination, all of which are best practices for decision-making and design, according to Jerry Silverman, director of the university’s Department of Animal Medicine, and laboratory/animal facility planner Josh Meyer. The Albert Sherman Center, the third such facility to be opened on the campus, contains several of these improvements over its predecessors.

The 12-story McGlothlin Medical Education Center at Virginia Commonwealth University houses classrooms, office space, and simulation facilities that shift the focus away from lecture-based learning and towards experiential learning. The 25,000-sf Center for Human Simulation and Patient Safety—a state-of-the-art facility serving medical students, residents, and continuing medical education students in both the Simulation and Standardized Patient programs—occupies two floors.