The OCME is the primary provider of forensic analysis, like DNA matching, for criminal and civil cases in New York City. Planning for a new building began in 2000. The OCME’s staff had outgrown its facility, and the city projected the need for a workload increase.

Planning for the 355,000-sf, $167-million building started traditionally, with lab space organized by departments. As equipment needs were examined during value engineering sessions and peer review, planners noticed redundancies.

“Redundant spaces limited flexibility and our ability to optimize a lab block in a way that would support its evolution,” explains project architect Robert Masters of Perkins Eastman. “So we moved from an inward-turned lab to a vertically stacked lab based on a process flow.”

A vertical strategy takes advantage of the building’s narrow space, 68 feet deep and 320 feet long. The planning team integrated departments based on consistent, shared processes, then worked upward through the building.

“The big challenge of this project is that it’s a vertical lab in an urban site. Because we were on a very narrow, restricted site we had to conceive of the lab in a different way,” says Masters.

Stacking Up a Logical Layout

The basic building stack starts with two sublevels, home to limited parking, mechanicals, support spaces, and the evidence intake unit. The ground floor features a lobby area and building support.

On the second level is the main auditorium. The third floor houses building security and mechanical space. The archive floor is next, and is equipped with records storage designed for keeping 12 years worth of evidence and case files. Also on the fourth floor is the SEM lab, which will hold the department’s scanning electron microscope for examining evidence like gun shot residue.

Four lab floors are situated above the archives, then another mechanical floor that supports the labs. Four floors of offices topped by a third mechanical space complete the building.

Initially, labs were slated for the higher floors. While this was seen as the most cost-effective way to vent fume hoods, the planners later moved the labs lower to lessen the effect of vibration on sensitive instrumentation.

Organizing Lab Space

The OCME building contains seven primary labs covering a wide range of functions: the high sensitivity lab processes cases with low amounts of DNA; the mitochondrial lab processes bones, blood, teeth, and hair for unknown remains and criminal cases; and the exemplar lab is dedicated to known references. The largest lab is the casework analysis lab, which at full capacity is designed to process more than 100,000 specimens per year in homicides, sex crimes, assaults, and property crimes.

Labs are organized in a modular fashion, with repetitive functions centrally located. The labs are stacked based on two primary process flow tracks—high sensitivity flow for work on trace amounts of evidence, and general casework flow where most evidence analysis is conducted.

“This allows for flexibility of equipment and its configuration within the labs with relatively minor modifications, and allows the labs themselves to ebb and flow on the floors,” explains Masters.

At the center of the two processing tracks are the secured evidence holding area on the fifth floor, the quality assurance/quality control lab on the sixth floor, which supports the labs by providing glassware and reagents, and a molecular genetics lab on the seventh floor.

The training lab lies above the vertical process flow labs, on the eighth floor. The lab is a microcosm of the whole building and can serve as a catastrophic events laboratory. The training lab is connected to emergency power so that it can continue to function even in a catastrophic power failure. Part of the eighth floor houses research and development labs.

Evidence flow starts with intake and processing on the sublevels, and works up through the building from floor five to floor seven. Evidence is distributed on the fifth floor. Pre-amplification, or extracting and preparing the evidence for amplification, occurs on floor six. The actual amplification (preparing the evidence to be typed and then compared to other samples) and DNA typing are done on the seventh floor.

All labs have an access point called biovestibules where employees undergo varying gowning and safety precautions to protect the evidence.

“All of the bio-vestibules are located at the same points on every floor, impacting how the floors are organized,” says Masters. “It was important the lab entries be at the same points in the building throughout the laboratory floor to coordinate with all of the vertical infrastructure running through the vertical core.”

Equipment and Design Maintain Process Flow

Dumbwaiters provide a controlled environment for carrying evidence between lab floors. Employees scan evidence whenever it changes hands, maintaining the chain of custody. The dumbwaiters are cleaned and maintained under stringent quality control protocols so evidence isn’t compromised. The labs also include pass-throughs similar to the vertical dumbwaiters to allow for horizontal transfer of evidence.

Each floor encompasses a 50-foot deep lab zone spanning the length of the building, fed by the bio-vestibules. The primary staff circulation corridor runs along one side of the building parallel to the lab zone. This circulation corridor is separated from the lab zone by a 12-foot deep service zone, containing elevators, mechanical, electrical, toilets, and the biovestibule access points.

“This design allowed us to emphasize the efficiency of the floorplate,” explains Masters. “We were able to achieve a 68 percent efficiency on a 24,400-sf floorplate by having a clear organizational strategy of traffic circulation and the large lab block.”

Inside the labs, fixed bench zones run along the primary lab circulation corridor. Mobile casework and equipment components abut the fixed bench. Plumbing and electrical connections are fed down from the ceilings through service umbilicals to the fixed casework. A wet bench is distributed as needed throughout the labs. Safety showers are also organized along the corridor, emphasizing the importance of the central spine.

Equipment support is nested on the face of the base cabinets, supplying power, central UPS, data, and phone. Mobile equipment includes custom casework, bench frames, and tables. Mobile cabinets move with staff as they are cross-trained.

In response to the narrow configuration of the building, the primary spine acts as a view corridor. Dividing walls between lab spaces are topped with glass clerestory windows. The ceiling rises more than two feet at the exterior window wall. Both design elements enhance the natural light.

“The view corridors tie the labs together and provide a sense of continuity on the floor, by creating the idea you can see from one end to another,” notes architect John Patey, principal-in-charge of the project.

Support Functions and Security

Support functions—lobby and reception area, secured lab intake, conference rooms, loading dock, storage, engineering, housekeeping, and secured evidence storage—are located throughout the building. The building support spaces are organized and zoned to reinforce secured distribution and processing of evidence.

Building security is always an issue, not only for evidence storage, but also in regards to staff and visitor flow. Public visitation is minimal, so general access is limited to the main level, a small intake lab, and the 300-seat auditorium. Secured conference rooms provide space for attorneys to meet with OCME personnel.

A building-wide security system allows only authorized employee access into the labs and offices. Police department personnel who deliver the evidence are cleared at multiple security points before they can access the secure intake area.

Challenges and Lessons Learned

The Forensic Biology Lab faced numerous hurdles and challenges—an urban setting, its size and scope, and the New York State Wicks Law (which requires multiple construction contracts on public projects). From site selection to completion, the project took seven years to complete.

“This was a long, protracted experience,” says Patey. “We prepared documents for 18 prime contracts and the construction manager was challenged with the task of organizing those forces.”

Designs were reviewed at various stages by the city’s Office of Management and Budget. A facilitator, architects, engineers, a cost consultant, and construction manager, plus peer review teams from Florida and London, England, also were brought in. These teams helped to identify the equipment redundancies, saving about 18 percent in equipment costs and serving as a catalyst to redesign the labs from a process flow perspective.

Lab planning involved educated guesswork, as it wasn’t possible to firmly project what the future would bring. The flexible layout and equipment proved effective, as design modifications occurred even during construction.

Repetitive electrical elements held up under unforeseen changes, too. Planners initially set up 208-volt infrastructure in the flexible equipment zones, but almost everything with that requirement had evaporated by project’s end. The allocation of 120-volt power and a central UPS was sufficient to meet much of the evolving equipment needs.

“We found our module to be forgiving; it allowed us to make changes that supported design revisions later in construction,” says Masters. “The module and repetitive elements held up to the morphing design.”

Wire equipment racks interfered with amplification devices, but utilizing standard lab tables solved the issue. Another equipment challenge was the capacity of the central UPS, which protects the instruments from the loss of collected data. The final equipment list included more machines needing UPS than originally anticipated, so the central system was augmented with localized units.

Moving In and Moving Forward

The Forensic Biology Lab was occupied in spring 2007 and overall the flexibility has allowed the end users to change quickly as forensic science evolves.

“The lab is certainly a quantum leap forward for the OCME. The existing OCME building is a 50-year-old structure with dated lab facilities that could not address the growth of the forensic biology program,” says Masters. “The OCME will face challenges as it continues to grow and evolve, but as it meets those challenges, the building will evolve as well.”

By Taitia Shelow

This report is based on a presentation Patey and Masters gave at the Tradeline Research Facilities 2008 conference in May and reflects the opinions of Perkins Eastman and not those of the Office of Chief Medical Examiner (OCME).

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ISSN: 1096-4894