Cleanroom Design Webinar Review: Expert Answers to Your Most Pressing Questions
Nate Roisen, AIA, Principal and Sci + Tech Practice Leader at BWBR
Nate Roisen, AIA, Principal and Sci + Tech Practice Leader at BWBR, joined his colleague Terri Ulrick, BWBR President and CEO, as a featured speaker in Lab Design’s Cleanroom Design Solutions Digital Conference. Their interactive webinar, "Ask Me Anything—Cleanroom Design Solutions with a Lab Design Expert," provided valuable insight into the challenges and best practices of cleanroom design, renovation, and optimization. Designed for architects, engineers, facility managers, and lab planners, the session explored strategies for layout planning, contamination control, airflow and filtration, material selection, and compliance with FDA and EU standards. Attendees received expert guidance on avoiding costly design missteps, ensuring consistent environmental control, and integrating sustainable materials and furnishings to boost performance and efficiency.
This webinar, which qualifies for AIA/HSW continuing education credit, can be accessed on demand for free, along with the other two webinars in this digital conference.
Lab Design spoke with Nate about key considerations for designing and renovating cleanrooms that meet stringent regulatory and operational standards, including best practices for layout planning, contamination control, airflow and filtration strategies, and the integration of sustainable, high-performance materials.
Q: What was your main reason for participating in this AMA session, and what did you hope attendees would take away from it?
A: BWBR’s clients represent a small fraction of the organizations who operate or rely on cleanroom space, so the AMA gave me an opportunity to hear from a diverse set of voices and a window into questions or concerns folks grapple with.
Q: What first got you interested in cleanroom design, and what keeps you engaged in this specialized area of lab planning?
A: The products our clients make in their cleanrooms are fascinating—medicines, computers, food, and pharmaceuticals all require incredible expertise to develop, research, and assemble. Every client does something unique, and our design approach needs to constantly evolve to different challenges and opportunities, which is what I love.
Q: In your experience, how often are cleanrooms designed without fully considering long-term maintenance and operational efficiency—and what’s the impact of that?
A: Operations and maintenance are important considerations during the design process, but time and money constraints make compromise inevitable. We find it important to have facilities groups at the table during design, to ensure maintenance considerations aren’t left behind in the rush to deliver a construction project on-time/on-budget.
Q: Were there any questions you didn’t get to answer, or topics you wish had come up or had more time during the webinar?
A: Energy efficiency is a topic we’ve found hard to tackle on cleanroom projects. Conditioning cleanroom spaces requires so much energy that typical strategies for offsetting a facility’s energy usage, like onsite renewables, just don’t pencil out. And yet, the opportunities are enormous—even marginal improvements in energy use can yield high volumes of savings. We spent some time discussing operations-based turndown strategies, where airflow and temperature can be cycled down when spaces aren’t in use, but this involves big regulatory hurdles. I’d like to hear more from users and designers on creative methods to improve energy efficiency in cleanrooms.
Q: Can you share a recent innovation in cleanroom materials or furnishings that you think is a game-changer?
A: I’ve seen promising advances in fan-powered HEPA filters on recent projects. Improved controls and integration with BAS systems allows these to address serviceability concerns that led clients to pursue ducted HEPA filters in past projects. This may be an opportunity to trim energy usage (as referenced above).
Q: From your perspective, what are some of the biggest misconceptions people have about cleanroom planning or renovation that came up during the webinar?
A: I’m not sure any major misconceptions surfaced—we had a very sophisticated set of questions! We did address the notion that cleanrooms are by necessity unpleasant spaces for the people who work in them. There are lots of strategies to bring daylight, views, color, and ergonomics into a cleanroom space, which can improve the employee experience dramatically.
Outside the cleanroom, breakrooms, restrooms, prayer rooms, and outdoor seating all offer tremendous opportunities if given care and attention during design. One of my favorite recent projects involves a renovation of a company’s main lunchroom from its original, very beige, 1980’s design. After move-in, the facilities manager said, “We feel like a high-tech company now!” which to me underscores how well-designed spaces can add all kinds of value to an organization.
Q: Were there any surprising concerns or priorities that attendees raised during the webinar that reflect a shift in how cleanrooms are being approached today?
A: Converting existing buildings from non-cleanroom to cleanroom functions continues to be an interesting topic. There are a number of well-documented challenges in taking on a conversion project, and at the moment, it’s hard to extract sufficient value out of an existing building to make the conversion cost-effective. That said, continued weakness in post-COVID commercial real estate markets is a durable trend. Will there come a point where the cost of an existing building falls to the level that such investments are worthwhile? Will different approaches to mechanical systems allow utilities to be installed more efficiently? The organization that cracks this code may find itself really well positioned to build and operate cleanroom facilities more cost effectively, and I’m interested to see how this plays out over the next five years.
View the webinars from the Cleanroom Design Solutions Digital Conference for free by registering here!
