Empower facility users with smart programming By Philip Macey, AIA; Ashwin Bhavikatti, AIA, LEED AP; and Jennifer Toll, AIA Consider programming to be the GPS system of a project. Encoded in it is the data that will direct the shape of your new facility. A well-defined program forms an essential facilities planning tool, consolidating operational, research, and educational goals into a focused document that will direct the design of the building. As a project leader, you can use the programming process to help build consensus, achieve management commitment, and create a place that translates that focus into a successful facility. Build consensus To build consensus, bring all project stakeholders to the same table; formulate overall goals and objectives; and determine how lab departments work together. Bring all project stakeholders to the same table. The essential ingredient in a building project is true “buy in,” which is more than just participation. In successful projects, the key players have a shared sense that their interests will be met by the facility, and because of that belief they stay involved and make resources and personnel available to the process. To create that commitment, you’ll need to engage the key participants in critical dialogue that fosters shared ownership of the program and subsequent project. By bringing these stakeholders together with your equally committed design team, you can engage in a process that is future- oriented, open, and focused on crafting a compelling vision. Fig. 1. The Steering Committee and the design team participants that collaborate on the facility creation. All figures: RNL. Click to enlarge. Participants typically come from four areas: operations, finance, maintenance, and the user groups. Members from each branch typically form the Steering Committee. Communications is the primary function of the Steering Committee, relaying critical information, decisions, and direction to the design team and communicating decisions back to departments and staff (Fig. 1, left). It is the design team’s responsibility to thoroughly document the decision making process in a manner that is easily disseminated from the Steering Committee to other staff for comment. Steady, reliable communication establishes and supports an attitude of collaboration and ownership among facility users and associated staff. At one university, the Steering Committee (composed of physicians and project managers) met weekly and by consensus set simple but critical goals for the meeting. The design team leader acted as moderator for challenging issues, bringing in other team members or drawing on experts from the owner team to support resolution. Incrementally, the Steering Committee created a broad basis of support for the project, overcoming even some longstanding departmental barriers. Formulate overall project goals and objectives. The design team and the Steering Committee should focus on establishing the primary project goals: those milestones that allow the team to measure their success. We often find that goals fall into four general categories: academic/research facility goals, operational goals, financial goals (costs or building performance), and schedule goals (deadline for construction, or use of funds). Crucial questions include: • What is the project vision and the organization’s mission? • What is the culture? How can the facility design reinforce the culture or improve it? • What are the schedule goals? Is phasing required to accommodate projected growth? • How can the current (or new) facility better meet the client’s needs? Create a needs list, separating the “desired” from the “essential.” During a university lab programming effort, the goal-setting process identified a real need for space that wasn’t listed on the university’s original program: informal collaboration space. Collaboration space that had been built into the existing facility was absorbed into office and storage space, threatening essential communication at the core of the science. Collaboration space was added to the program, championed by all departments, and funds were re-organized to create a budget that ensured the goal was met during design. Determine how lab departments work together. The design team needs to become closely involved with the current facility and understand how research groups work together, listening to the similarities and differences in research styles and lab operations. Site tours, observation, and user interviews are needed for full understanding of the client’s needs. Meetings discussing which research groups are affiliated with one another and how they work together help define patterns. Other items discussed might include whether research groups share staff and how current and future trends may influence future work groups. At one facility, 12 research groups were to be located on one floor. Often, members of research groups overlapped and were located on another floor in the same facility. In addition, the groups were constantly fluctuating in size. The design team held several workshops with the staff to determine the interrelationships and develop floorplan diagrams that fit the client’s requirements. The solution was to offer flexible standardized office spaces that could be reassigned depending on the fluctuating staff requirements of the research groups on that floor. This helped reduce the costs and time associated with complicated reconfigurations. Capture the vision To capture the client’s vision, the programmers must identify essential lab operations; consolidate and integrate operations as appropriate; and understand specialty lab needs. Fig. 2. Once the need for a laboratory project is recognized, the team determines the functions and tasks that will be performed and develops operational concepts for each task and function. Click to enlarge. Identify essential lab operations, including their interactions/separations. A brief description of the primary lab operations will create a tool that all stakeholders can share. The goal is to establish a concise list of operations, both existing and new, not necessarily spaces (Fig. 2, left). This approach continues the theme of creating “buy in” by integrating the needs of your team into the project. Creating a shared description of what everyone thinks they need will also begin the process of separating needs (those things that are essential to operations) from wants (the discretionary choices that might make things better but are not essential). The description can include: • The essential work of the lab (research, teaching, testing, pilot, or scale-up) and the primary equipment and associated spaces. • The workflow. (Is the space self-supporting or does it rely on any work from other labs or daily delivery?) • Types and number of lab spaces. (Clean lab, BSL, vibration isolation required?) • General description of chemical quantities and how they are used. Consolidate and integrate lab operation—current and future. One of the most powerful movements in science education and research is the desire for interaction across disciplines and departments. To achieve this goal, clients are looking for practical ways to consolidate and integrate labs and reduce the number of walls, whether they are real or perceived partitions. This approach has benefits, but has to respect the legitimate need for separations (safety, cleanliness, operational, or educational needs). Fig. 3. The project team decides and proposes what groups of tasks can or should be undertaken in one space or a combination of spaces, and how the space relationships work. Click to enlarge. With this list of spaces we use a simple but powerful graphic tool to streamline and keep objective the process of considering what spaces might be candidates for consolidation and which must maintain separation (Fig. 3, left). By entering the names along one axis and filling in the appropriate graphic symbol (okay to combine, near but separate, etc.), a pattern emerges that indicates opportunities for creating shared lab spaces or suites. Consolidating lab operations often leads to: • Productivity gains (staff more easily addresses several operations in one room). • Operational efficiencies (duplicate equipment can be eliminated). • Increased interaction (fostering new ideas and concepts). • Control of construction costs (by reducing walls, improving thermal performance, and simplifying HVAC systems and controls). Understand specialty lab needs. Once opportunities for consolidation are identified, what’s left are typically specialty labs. These are spaces that must have some type of boundary for safe and efficient operation. • Containment labs. • Biosafety labs. • Cleanrooms, laser labs. • Fabrication or assembly labs. • Micro-scaling for chemistry labs (more sustainable and cost-effective). As much as collaboration and consolidation are beneficial to both good science and efficient facilities, it’s often specialty labs that are the differentiator in science research and education. They can provide the organization with the edge to push ahead of the competition, but also typically represent the highest cost per ft2 in development. Involve the Steering Committee in some blue-sky thinking about the technical issues, but also how these types of investments can be used to advance the larger goals of the project and the organization. To stay competitive, a large aerospace company needed to consolidate its lab operations into one building. Several different labs supporting Class 100 manufacturing and testing were in separate buildings due to outdated divisions in the company. Following an organizational realignment, the manufacturing and test spaces were reconsidered as opportunities for cross training. The new facility design reduced overhead, reduced the need for new hires, and reduced the overall production schedule. Make your map As the planning comes into focus, it’s time to calculate the real needs for a new building, and define net and gross space. Calculate the real needs for a new lab building. At the heart of the program are three simple criteria that will empower the users to calculate the amount of space required: • Staff head-count projections. This should include existing and future head count required for a specific number of years, taken from the project vision. • Space standards. If standards do not exist, they should be established for the following: equivalent linear ft of bench space per researcher (includes dedicated bench and desk space, an amount of shared sink and equipment spaces, varying with the science being conducted, with wet labs being the highest compared to dry labs); lab support requirements as a percentage of lab space (for research labs, the recent trend is to provide a minimum ratio of 50% support to 50% lab space); office requirements as a percentage of lab space. • Planning horizon. Short-term and long-term planning should be done based on specific business plan projections to link the facility needs to the vision of growth and change. By combining these three criteria, a picture of current and future space needs will emerge. Using the stakeholder group, think critically about the elements of staff and space to get to a consensus picture that sifts the essential from the desired to reveal the real needs. Identify net and gross space. The program is a statement of the net and gross areas, and for planning purposes, it’s critical for the design team and users to have consensus on these terms and how they are used. The terms can be used in very different ways during discussions about planning or leasing. For clarity’s sake, we’ll focus on two key terms, net and gross area. • Gross area is typically defined as the area within surrounding exterior walls exclusive of shafts and courts. Use: site planning and budgeting. • Net Area (also useable) is any area that is named specifically in the user’s requirements and typically includes such spaces as offices, labs, lab support spaces, and storage. Use: department-assignable area needs, establishes net area per person. Net area does not typically include restrooms; mechanical, electrical, and tele/data rooms; and hallways, lobbies, entrances, elevators, and stairs. The ratio of net to gross varies depending on the type of use. Often program plans will set percentage of net to gross to estimate the building’s total area. This estimate is tested by floorplans during design. Especially when discussing cleanrooms, the mechanical systems can be a large portion of the building and may need to be added to the net area as part of the space requirements rather than listed in the gross as support space. Renovation, addition, or expansion? Determining your facility growth options begins with a cost/benefit analysis of the following scenarios: • Can the existing building be remodeled? • Can the existing building and site accept an addition? • Would it be better to purchase an existing building or build new? To evaluate the possibility of purchasing or building new, the programming process examines the following: • Can the site fit a new building and supporting elements? Can the site accommodate parking, driveway, service yards, and loading areas? • Utilities and services evaluation: Is the existing utility infrastructure sized properly to handle the load of your facility? To evaluate the possible renovation or addition, the program plan must assess the following key considerations: • Existing holdings: Is an addition practical (for safety, class size, research focus)? • Existing structure: Is the existing roof structure capable of supporting new mechanical equipment? What are the remedial measures required? Will new openings affect existing structure? Is vibration a concern? Is there adequate floor-to-floor height and column spacing for lab modules? • Plumbing and HVAC condition: What is the existing service? Are upgrades required? • Electrical supply: Can the existing infrastructure support expansion? Are upgrades required? Are generators or emergency power needed? Can the site accommodate them? With a Steering Committee that has crafted their shared vision of a new facility and directed data to focus on needs (with an understanding of the wants), you empower your team. The resulting buy-in helps provide clear direction for design of the facility and supports a seamless transition to construction and operations. By taking the time to approach programming as an opportunity for user empowerment, the team has a much better chance of creating a facility that stays within its budget while meeting the client’s scientific and strategic objectives. Philip Macey, AIA, is the director of science and technology for RNL, with significant expertise in private industry R&D and higher education facilities. Ashwin Bhavikatti, AIA, LEED AP, is a lab architect with extensive experience in science facility design and programming. Jennifer Toll, AIA, is a senior lab architect with deep expertise in planning and design of facilities for higher education and medical research. With offices in Denver, Los Angeles, and Phoenix, RNL provides architecture, interior design, urban design/planning, landscape architecture, and MEP engineering services, with core market sectors in workplaces, science and technology, education, transportation, libraries, sustainability, and land planning projects.