Latest Reports

The new teaching facility for the Warren Alpert Medical School at Brown University contains all of the components for the first two years of medical school, creating a “home” for the Medical School on a completely new urban campus and supporting an increase in class size from 100 to 120 students. Medical School admissions applications increased from 2,825 in 2010 (when construction commenced) to 4,725 in 2012 (post-occupancy), an increase of 67 percent, and there are 70 applicants for every position. Annual fundraising for medical programs increased 15 percent from 2011 to 2012.

The National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL), on Boston University’s Medical Campus, is maximizing secure wireless networks and private cloud computing to improve safety, operational efficiency, and energy consumption. The seven-story building—which contains BSL-2, BSL-3, and BSL-4 facilities—features a dedicated data center, virtualized servers, extensive use of thin clients, and a secure wireless network providing voice-over-IP (VoIP) communications that cover more than 90 percent of the interior.

Blindly trying to incorporate all the cutting-edge technologies and processes in the delivery of a new facility can lead to more waste than value. It’s important that building owners understand which Lean design principles, innovative technologies, and sustainability strategies meet their needs and add value to their specific project in a way that maximizes lifecycle performance, says Andreas Phelps, integrated projects executive at Balfour Beatty Construction.

The Vanderbilt University Medical Center VANTAGE Laboratory consolidates physically separate research facilities into one shared space in order to optimize collaboration and acceleration of new biological and clinical discoveries. The renovation of 13,300 gsf of underutilized and aged space in the original 1925 Medical Center building in the heart of the medical campus co-locates six existing cores: Genome Technology, BioVU (Vanderbilt’s DNA repository), DNA Resources, DNA Sequencing, Vanderbilt Microarray Shared Resource, and Flow Cytometry.

The new Consolidated Forensic Laboratory (CFL) in the heart of Washington, D.C., not only merges the physical environs of three city public safety agencies—public health, the chief medical examiner, and the forensics labs—but also creates a new dynamic for interagency cooperation. Co-location in the 351,000-sf, six-story, state-of-the-art facility allows the city to upgrade all three agencies cost effectively while improving the science, efficiency, and integrity of the work performed there. The efficiency extends to the building systems, with the CFL achieving LEED Platinum.