Users, contractors collaborate on complex new FDA facility By Aaron Turpin On any given day, there are close to 1,100 construction workers, six general contracting firms, and 62 subcontractors working to erect the Food and Drug Administration’s new laboratory and office campus in Silver Spring, Md. The campus is a consolidation of FDA headquarters and office programs that have been scattered in 40 different buildings and 18 different locations in the Greater Washington, D.C., area. When construction is completed around 2011, there will be 14 separate buildings, all connected via tunnels, enclosed bridges, and outdoor sidewalks. Heery-Tishman, the joint venture team responsible for construction management, has to coordinate all the project team members at work on the campus but also focus on the ~2,000 employees already occupying completed campus structures. These employees require easy campus access and the highest caliber facilities to complete the research necessary to ensure product and drug safety for an entire nation. The new Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) Engineering and Physics Laboratory, on the FDA campus in Silver Spring, Md., includes a low-slung wing housing an anechoic chamber. All photos: Ron Solomon, Ron Solomon Photography. Click to enlarge. The Heery-Tishman team, which consists of Heery International and Tishman Construction, reports directly to the General Services Administration (GSA), the independent government agency that leases space to the FDA. From the outset, Heery Tishman recognized the only way to meet the project’s stringent requirements was to work as a team, one that not only discussed the multitude of design and construction issues that arose regularly, but banded together with GSA, FDA, the local community, and the project design team to resolve them. “The new FDA campus is one of the most complicated, complex projects on which the Federal Government is working,” says GSA project executive Shapour Ebadi. “Each lab has a different mission with tasks that can’t be completed in cookie-cutter facilities.” A case in point is the 144,000-ft2 Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) Engineering and Physics Laboratory. It has five occupied floors that afford office, conference, and lab spaces, as well as an additional floor that houses a mechanical penthouse. “CDRH’s mission is to evaluate electromagnetic and medical devices, as well as radiological instruments and consumer appliances that generate electromagnetic radiation or are susceptible to it,” says Heery-Tishman senior MEP project manager Mike Regimenti. “Among a host of other things, this group ensures, for example, that everyday devices such as microwave ovens, cell phones and wireless computer networks don’t interfere with medical devices such as pacemakers, automatic implanted defibrillators, and hearing aids.” High-tech glazing and architectural sunscreens contribute to sustainability in the design of the LEED Silver facility.Click to enlarge. Assessing unique needs Before moving into the new facility, the group was housed in several retrofitted facilities in a Rockville, Md., business park. “The old facilities limited the scientists’ efforts,” says Heery-Tishman project engineer Jonathan Brunelle. “The CDRH Engineering and Physics Laboratory was designed to accommodate their specific needs. It was also designed to promote collaboration among scientists by incorporating common spaces, office clusters, and even a coffee bar to promote casual interaction.” Of course, creating a facility that operated according to scientist specifications required ongoing communication with the scientists. “Before the first plans were drawn, we toured the organization’s existing facilities to learn more about their workspaces,” Regimenti says. “We then worked with project designer KlingStubbins (in association with RTKL), and FDA representatives to help them articulate their needs. The entire team, which consisted of architects, engineers, construction managers, and GSA and FDA representatives, met bi-weekly for programming. Given the nature of their work, CDRH scientists had very specific requirements for temperature, vibration, acoustic performance, reflection suppression, x-ray and radiofrequency shielding, and precise lighting controls, all of which created a host of construction challenges. Our role was to work closely with the architectural and engineering design team to help translate highly complex technical requirements and details into viable construction solutions.” FDA chief scientist Charles Warr was an eager participant in the design and construction process. The building’s assortment of labs that cannot allow natural light led to the placement of offices and some less light-sensitive labs at the perimeter, with more sensitive labs at the core. Internal glazing permits borrowed light to enter some of the interior spaces. Click to enlarge. “With a project of this nature, it’s imperative to have someone on the design and construction team that knows what the scientists are trying to accomplish,” he says. Warr, a nuclear physicist by training, worked with the scientists to convey their particular needs. “Without a doubt, technology had to drive the design of this facility,” he says. “We went over each lab with each scientist, exploring the technologies that needed to be employed and the implications for design. When we began this process, we had no preconceptions of what the space should look like.” He believes the facility’s year-long planning process was worth the effort. “There’s approximately $2 million of FDA science-staff time invested in this building,” Warr adds, “but it helped us create the building we need for the next 40 years.” Extreme environmental control One of the features of which FDA is most proud is the RF-shielded anechoic chamber that resides in a carefully encased two-story wing. A site survey was completed before construction began to measure ambient RF energy and make a final decision on the degree of RF shielding that would be required. The anechoic chamber sits on hundreds of individually cut, electrically insulating fiberglass tubes, for example, because even the best concrete wouldn’t be level enough, or provide sufficient electrical isolation from ground, to meet FDA requirements.   Understanding how the scientists needed the building to function resulted in the design and construction of a thicker-than-average foundation, creating a facility that is essentially vibration-free in selected areas. (The project team included Acentech Inc., Cambridge, Mass., as vibration consultant and Don Heirman Consultants, Lincroft, N.J., as the consultant for RF shielding.) The RF-shielded anechoic chamber sits on hundreds of individually cut, electrically insulating fiberglass tubes. Click to enlarge. “From the start, our goal was to reach ANSI curve A vibration conditions,” Warr notes. “Too often, this goal isn’t considered until move-in, when it’s too late to change the foundation.”   Without the proper foundation, ANSI curve A vibration conditions are extremely difficult to achieve. “In the old facility, scientists sometimes had to wait until the middle of the night for the ebb in traffic flow before using certain vibration-sensitive instruments,” Regimenti says. “Before finalizing the building footprint on the site, impacts and influences of local vibration sources and ambient radio frequencies were evaluated. Once the building foundation was started, we did additional vibration testing within the actual footprint. From a construction standpoint, we did everything we could to counter vibrations.” The need for stability also resulted in independently poured slabs for the facility’s two electron microscopes. “Electron microscopes are incredibly sensitive to building vibrations,” Regimenti says. “Those separate slabs are supported by pneumatic isolators hooked up to compressed air, allowing them to essentially float on air. If, for some reason, the building did vibrate, the instruments would remain stable.” Occasionally, Heery-Tishman’s construction solutions differed from initial design specifications. On one hand, Regimenti cites, certain RF-shielded labs called for the installation of network connections to allow scientists to transmit high-speed data. Unfortunately, those network connections would have penetrated the RF emission shields that were uniquely built into the envelope of certain labs. “I must note that our decision to use the wall, ceiling, and floor as the shielded layer was a unique solution for creating more usable lab space per FDA’s request,” he says. “As far as the high-speed network connections were concerned, there are no data filters in the world built to handle 100 megabits per second, much less the FDA’s gigabit LAN requirements. We resolved the problem by running a single fiber optic cable through the envelope of each room, installing an electro-optical converter inside each RF-shielded envelope, and then running multiple CAT 6 data drops inside the envelope.” The facility’s labs offer a great deal of potential for rearrangement and custom ization, including outlets of multiple electrical voltages to accommodate diverse instrumentation. Click to enlarge. Daylighting issues From the project’s inception, team members knew the facilities were to be designed and constructed to achieve LEED Silver certification. With that in mind, the CDRH design incorporates features such as a high-performance curtain wall system, high-performance glazing, in-room occupancy lighting sensors, premium-efficiency motors, variable frequency drives on exhaust fans, pumps and air handling units, a partially vegetated roof, and more. Conventional labs run mostly on 100% outside air, which Regimenti knows is a terrible waste of energy. “CDRH uses heat wheel technology with special 3 angstrom media built into the air handlers to transfer both heat and humidity from the exhaust systems back into the building. This specific technology has been used in both hospitals and laboratories.” “The HVAC system design provides both flexibility and energy efficiency,” adds Raymond Doyle, PE, engineering design principal for project architect and MEP engineer KlingStubbins. “In addition to heat recovery technologies, the laboratory exhaust and return distribution systems are interchangeable to allow for renovation from a chemical lab to an electronics lab.” The most challenging feature was natural daylighting. “GSA and FDA wanted to incorporate as much light as possible into the facility,” Regimenti notes. That light is evidenced in the massive bank of perimeter windows. “Traditional offices and laboratories that are not light-sensitive are located on the exterior wall, and more sensitive laboratories are located internal to the building circulation, receiving either borrowed light or no light depending on the scientific function. Borrowed light is also responsible for bringing ample light into the facility’s basement. “Light, however, is the antithesis of what is needed in a laser lab,” Warr comments. Lasers play a major role in day-to-day CDRH testing. “You can’t let light into a laser lab, can’t let laser beams leave a lab, and can’t allow reflections from finishes and fixtures within the lab. Some intense laser beams, even some that are invisible, can cause immediate blindness.” The incorporation of interlocked warning signs let scientists know when they can and can’t enter labs. With systems like this in place, scientists can enjoy the natural light. Thanks to electrical outlets and network connections placed on every outdoor balcony, scientists are also encouraged to take their laptops outside for a breath of fresh air. “This laboratory presented a myriad of design challenges,” says John E. Robinson Jr., AIA, KlingStubbins’ project director. “The design direction was driven by three overarching principles. We wanted to allow the scientific requirements to inform and determine the design direction, optimize the flexibility of the building plan and systems, and provide a vibrant environment that would promote interaction by funneling scientific staff to common use areas. Working closely with Heery-Tishman, we were able to maintain these three principles throughout design and construction.” Both Regimenti and Warr believe that design flexibility was integral to the building’s long-term success. “We designed and set the requirements for this building three years ago,” Warr says. Given the nature of technology, certain requirements have already changed. Despite those changes, the duo knows the facility is built to accommodate a wide variety of needs, such as RF studies at frequencies up to 40 GHz. “Scientists already have multiple voltage outlets at their disposal to manage projects that require different voltages, including European standard voltage at 50 Hz,” Regimenti offers. The anechoic chamber has changeable floors to convert into a ground-plane floor in only half a day. “We built as much flexibility into each lab as possible. I think it’s safe to say there’s no other facility like it in the world.” Aaron Turpin, senior associate, Heery International, is a site coordinator/project manager for the FDA Heery-Tishman team on the FDA project in Silver Spring, Md.