However, they also look at what’s happened over the last year.
However, for Containment Level 3 (or BSL3) labs and above, cleanrooms, environments requiring exceptionally tight tolerances, and other more onerous requirements, façades can be quite problematic.Airtightness is a particular challenge that can make a perfectly adequate office facade ill-suited for lab use, or may result in suppliers unwilling to guarantee lab performance, or disputes during commissioning.
In such cases, rather than re-clad the building (which defeats most of the point of a conversion) a possible solution is a ‘box in a box’ lab fit-out, though this will be more expensive and will reduce net usable space..Furthermore, given how much energy labs consume compared to an office it may be sensible to improve the performance of an older façade, which will, of course, add cost and programme, and there can be other issues around cladding, for example, some systems and materials used in offices are not accepted by life science businesses and insurers for fire safety and loss prevention reasons.. Office finishes are unlikely to be suitable for lab use, and it is almost always best to complete a full strip-out of the office at the start of a project.This will simplify design and construction in the long-run, and will often expose hidden defects or complications (see below.)
Raised access floors will also ideally be sealed or removed to minimise future sources of contamination.For the lab fit-out itself, appropriate finishes must of course be selected, and this will be based on a wide-range of criteria such as cleaning material compatibility.. 10.
Defects.. Hidden defects in existing office buildings can add unexpected cost and delay to lab conversion projects..
Existing offices, like all buildings, will almost always harbour some latent issues that will add complication during design or construction.Bringing data into one place and organising it around packages will give owners a single pane of glass through which to visualise what’s going on between the planning side and the production side of the supply chain.. A deeper understanding of the supply chain enables everyone to see patterns in the availability of products, to ask the right questions, and to plan better.. 4.
Standardising areas of variance and stepping away from totally bespoke designs is key..The perfect future is a ‘data clearing house’ where minor design modifications to better align with supply chain data can transform productivity..
The key to achieving this is better communication between owners and suppliers, where the supply chain can offer equivalent alternatives and remove some ‘bespokeness’ from the process..If we issue the same design intent multiple times but continue to detail it in slightly different ways, the result is lots of slightly different projects, all with different supply chains.