The Question Your Lab Design Kickoff Is Missing
Your 90-day check-in with the client leaves you disappointed. You followed the program, met every requirement, secured every approval, and the space still doesn't function the way the client expected.
This isn't a design failure. It's an information failure. Here’s what likely happened:
The operational input came from the client side too late to act on without blowing the budget.
There were too many voices for the design team to filter through effectively.
The information that they gave you wasn't translatable into something the design team could build from, and you were left to make assumptions about what they needed.
Inviting more voices to the table doesn’t fix this—it usually makes it worse. When you have multiple department managers talking to the design team, that team can receive competing priorities with no filter. You have no way to reconcile what one department wants and if it will impact another. Then, somehow, you find yourself in the terrifying world of laboratory politics. This ends up creating more work for your design team because they must make judgment calls that they're not qualified to make. The result is a lab that looks good on paper but immediately frustrates the people who will occupy it.
Getting more input from the client side isn't the same thing as getting good input. The difference isn’t how much input you get. It’s when it arrives.
The design window has five distinctive phases:
Site selection and programming
Schematic design
Design development
Construction documents
Construction and commissioning
Operational input is the most valuable at the schematic design phase, before any of the spatial decisions are locked in right before the design development phase. Anything added after the construction document phase creates real cost penalties, not theoretical ones. Introducing operational input at the right time prevents later phases from running on assumptions made by people outside the lab. My article in the July 2026 issue of Lab Manager speaks to the concept of identifying a single voice in the design phase. An operational gatekeeper can provide the design team with information that is usable, relevant, and actionable.
This person is an appointed spokesperson for the client side and is the contact point for the design team. They hold regular meetings with the operations team to gather requirements and input, then deliver them to the design team in an actionable way. During design meetings, they address real-time conflicts and go back to the lab team for solutions. Between meetings, they coordinate the operations-side conversations so that the design team never has to manage them directly. The gatekeeper translates between the lab and design vocabulary so that design teams aren’t required to become lab operations experts. The value of this role seems obvious, but many lab teams have never “named” this person themselves.
An effective operational gatekeeper has two non-negotiable qualities: operational credibility and organizational authority. Credibility comes from them knowing the workflows, the dependencies, and the staff patterns well enough to speak to what matters to the lab. Authority means that they are trusted enough by their peers to be effective in managing the lab team’s expectations and providing the design team with input that they can take seriously.
From a distance, one would think the lab director should be the automatic choice. That's not always the case.
The visibility of a director into their lab could range from working alongside their team on the bench to functioning in the role remotely. Strong candidates could be a bench supervisor who has interdepartmental experience, a lead tech who covers multiple departments regularly, or an outside operations consultant with exposure to multiple labs and experience with builds and renovations.
If there is no clear candidate on the client side, you should name that gap before the schematic design begins. Do not work quietly around it.
Once that operational gatekeeper is in place, it's important to know what to ask them. This person will serve as a design team benefit, not a lab-side checklist. They will be able to bring things to the table unprompted that you won't even know to ask about. Some of these things will include:
Equipment validation space. An SME understands relocations often require temporary side-by-side instrument space for validations. These spaces are not part of the final workflow plan, but they must be considered during the design phase.
Instrument clearance beyond spec sheets. Lab operators understand that the way they use an instrument in practice determines how much space is needed around it and how much space a vendor will need to service it.
Clean and dirty space separation. They’ll be aware of the walking paths and high-traffic zones in the laboratory, so they are considered during design.
Specimen movement. They will be able to speak accurately about the physical paths that specimens travel through the lab, which rarely matches what may be shown on provided workflow diagrams.
Volume flexibility. Designs must be created around peak capacity and with consideration of future growth.
Automation line clearance. Conveyors and automation infrastructure require walking paths, pass-throughs, and clearance planning before you even factor in the equipment it serves.
Shift staffing patterns. The design will need to consider the differences between peak and off-peak staffing and accommodate both.
Don’t wait for the client to bring this person to the table—that’s backwards. Because of the value that the operational gatekeeper brings to the design process, requesting one should become a standard project kickoff item. It should be on the same checklist as anything else that the design team confirms before the work starts.
The question is simple: Who is the single operational point of contact, and do they have both the credibility and the authority to speak for the entire lab?
If the answer is unclear or no one has been named, that should be the design team's cue to help the client identify one before the design work begins. A design team asking these questions and identifying that person sets up the project for success.
When your design team uses an operational gatekeeper, you create a design that your team can stand behind. No one will walk into the new lab on opening day and wonder how the design team missed all these things that are so clearly obvious. You won't miss it because someone you spoke to helped you identify it early in the process.
