“Each module contains all the spaces needed to support the species in that module,” says Tom Grimble, a senior associate at Perkins + Will in Boston. “Holding facilities for the animals, procedure rooms, and labs are grouped together so that all activity for that particular species can be contained in one area.”

The primary challenges of constructing and operating such a facility include minimizing cross contamination when moving materials and animals, providing a secure, accessible building for staff and faculty on a college campus, and keeping the animals separated, while still providing flexibility for future changes.

The history of the MACF, situated on the University campus in London, Ontario, Canada, goes back to the late 1990s. The facility was envisioned as a bold response to the increased demand for animal facilities on campus and as a recruiting tool to bring top research talent to the campus.

Recruiting top talent to work in a city located some distance from larger research centers like Toronto and Montreal requires a strong lab infrastructure in well-designed buildings. The UWO is affiliated with the two London teaching hospitals. The MACF is located adjacent to University Hospital, a large teaching facility and transplant center, and the Robarts Research Institute.

There are nine animal facilities located throughout the city, and while there is no central management system, strong veterinary and ethical oversight is provided by the University. Several of the facilities are older, in need of repairs, and are challenged to adequately support modern animal-based research. Nearly 200 researchers work in the nine facilities, and use approximately 60,000 animals per year in their scientific studies.

The University and affiliated institutions boast strength in a number of areas. In fact, the animal research taking place in the city closely mirrors the advances occurring in the clinical community in transplantation, imaging, and perinatal medicine.

“The University realized it had some significant hurdles to overcome in order to reach its goals,” notes Geraldine (Gerry) Kent, director of Animal Care and Veterinary Services at the UWO. “They needed more animal space and better facilities to meet regulatory standards which are always becoming more stringent. They decided to work together with the affiliate institutes in the city to design, manage, and operate a totally new facility.”

Inception of the MACF

The University and its affiliates decided to construct the MACF in order to build upon existing research assets, share space in a central location, and consolidate resources, including labs, animals, and researchers. Collaboration was essential between all shareholders ranging from the UWO’s senior administrative team, the Canadian Council on Animal Care (CCAC), the researchers, architects, construction contractors, equipment vendors, regulatory organizations, granting agencies, engineers, and facilities management team.

The original funding application submitted to the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) outlined the need to house sheep, pigs, and primates, but there was no mention of mice. Researchers later realized mice are just as critical to their work and asked the CFI to amend the application to include this species. The University also asked the CFI to permit the MACF to operate under the quality assurance guidelines set forth by the Good Laboratory Practices (GLP) standards.

This means experiments must run under the stringent quality assurance standards of the GLP. Engineering controls and the HVAC systems have to be very precise and adhering to the standards requires an incredible amount of documentation. It is a big step for a university to take and it meant rethinking the manner in which the MACF would be constructed.

The CFI granted the requests with the caveat that the University stay within its total project budget of nearly $34 million (CAD).

Facility Layout Particulars

Construction of the two-story building began in August 2003 and was completed in late 2005 with occupancy occurring in September 2006. The 50,000-sf facility, connected to the existing Health Science Complex, is located behind University Hospital and is surrounded by steep topography. Being tucked away behind the hospital and partially integrated into the hillside is ideal for security purposes, and also allows for better insulation.

The main entry to the building is hidden behind a fin-wall and is not readily visible or accessible to anyone except those who work in the facility or have a specific reason for visiting. Entry to the facility can only be accomplished by those who have access to security cards allowing proper clearance. A second security checkpoint awaits anyone wanting to access any of the critical areas of the facility.

Service areas are just as inconspicuous with a high fence to conceal the loading dock area and gates that can be closed to prevent animals from escaping as they are being unloaded. This setup provides the highest level of containment to protect the animals. There are two dock levelers for receiving animals. The first one moves to meet the height of different trucks and animals can be walked onto the platform and into the building. The second is a scissors lift so that heavier animals, like baboons, can be delivered to the dock and then lifted onto the platform. The animals are kept in a secure receiving room located just inside the docks until they can be transferred to their modules.

The security of the MACF also extends to the waste management, chemical storage, and cold storage systems. For example, all trash is kept inside the facility in its own sealed and ventilated room to control odors. There is a special receiving area for chemical storage so the loading dock is not cluttered. Animals are held in the cold storage room after they are euthanized and then transported after hours to an adjacent facility.

“In addition to the cold storage space, we have reserved space for a chemical digester because that seems to be the direction of the future,” says Grimble.

Both floors of the MACF are divided into four zones, and the zone at the rear of the facility is the mechanical zone which extends the full length of the building. This zone is two stories high and was able to be partially integrated into the hillside. Immediately adjacent to this zone is the holding zone, which is comprised of 18 holding rooms that directly access an internal service corridor.

Sandwiched between this service corridor and the public corridor is the zone for procedure rooms and lab space. This allows doctors to easily access the procedure rooms from the public corridor without entering the service core or holding rooms. The support zone, which includes cagewash rooms and storage, is located toward the front of the facility.

The first floor has provisions for future horizontal expansion. The University can meet the anticipated need for more rodent space in the future by expanding the building horizontally and can accommodate research programs by adding an additional three floors.

Design Features

The MACF features both inclusive and exclusive barriers. Inclusive barriers are used to house primates and sheep that could potentially be dangerous to organisms outside the barrier. This type of barrier is negatively pressurized so the air can be filtered as it leaves, and there are protocols for entering and exiting to ensure that personnel are properly protected and that the barrier is maintained under negative pressure. The exclusive barriers house pigs and mice which need to be protected from organisms outside the barrier. These modules are positively pressurized and are designed to keep contaminants out of the area.

Each module contains a service corridor which provides access to the modules and holding rooms, allowing vivarium staff to access the animals from the holding room and bring them to the procedure room. There are doorways between the modules in the service corridor, but they are not normally accessed. These doors allow for future flexibility and adaptability of the facility and are locked and sealed. The doors contain a glass panel and a pane of glass adjacent to them so scientists working in one module can view their colleagues working inside another module.

“We provided a modest entry lobby to this building to receive visitors and to give the employees some non-clinical space to retreat to when they are not working in the modules,” says Grimble. “Since the public corridor is not inside the barrier, it afforded us the opportunity to bring light into the facility with some openings and glass block windows.”

Mechanical Support

The term interstitial space refers to having a mechanical floor between floors, but extrastitial is a word coined by the architects designing the MACF.

“We wanted to align floor-to-floor heights with the existing facility, so we didn’t have the ability to add the extra vertical height necessary to add a floor between floors,” says Grimble. “We did, however, want the advantages of interstitial space, including access to mechanical devices, valves, and boxes. This avoids the need to interrupt the processes inside the vivarium in order to make changes.”

Meeting the facility’s needs meant constructing a two-story mechanical space that is partially integrated into the hillside. The air handling unit is located on the roof and air is brought down into the ductwork and distributed over the plenum space into the vivarium areas. All of the variable air volume boxes and all of the plumbing are located in this mechanical zone. A catwalk runs down the center of the zone so all of the valves and other equipment can be conveniently accessed without the need to climb ladders.

Modules that require HEPA-filtered supply air or exhaust are serviced with a single filter bank, which is more economical than maintaining multiple filters. Future changes regarding air flow to the modules can easily be made using the same filter and ductwork system. The roof is also stubbed to accommodate an additional three floors of vertical expansion.

The MACF features sufficient redundancy with four supply fans and four exhaust fans, each one of which can handle one-third redundancy so only three fans need to run simultaneously. A cold water backup system is used for the chilled water supply and a 400 kilovolt-ampere generator powers the building, which also has room for an additional generator.

The mechanical costs account for more than 28 percent of the budget, while the electrical costs are fewer than 10 percent. The building uses a lot of energy with 455 tons of cooling, a supply of 83,700 cubic feet per minute (CFM), and exhaust of 80,810 CFM.

Construction Logistics

Access issues at the site were difficult for the contractor, as well as for subcontractors and suppliers who had trouble finding the building since it had no signage. Building into the side of the hill offered special challenges, including the relocation of a cable for a hydro substation located at the site.

Restrictions imposed by the contractor during construction were especially important given the nature of the research conducted in the MACF.

“The contractor was vigilant about not having food or drinks in the building,” says Tom Tillmann, vice president of architects Tillmann Ruth Mocellin in London, Ontario. “We didn’t want to start the project with bacteria-generating food in the building, nor did we permit smoking on the site.”

Portable restroom facilities were located off-site, not in the building, during construction.

Access to the building was restricted during construction with high-level security to thwart any vandalism attempts.

A bid-build project delivery method was used and the construction was completed in 22 months at a cost of more than $400 (CAD) per square foot.

“These are complex buildings due to the overlapping of different trades and the amount of difficult work that each must complete,” says Tillmann. “Tests and mockups were used because of the large number of holding rooms.”

For example, the original plan called for the use of methyl methacrylate for the flooring. However, epoxy resin was eventually used as a cost-saving measure on the floors, ceilings, and walls. A mockup of one of the operating rooms was created and the results set the quality standard throughout the building.

The human factor is evident throughout the building with natural light, bright colors, full spectrum lighting to properly view the animals, and public spaces to accommodate visitors.

Lessons Learned

Having input from the CCAC throughout a project of this nature is essential to its success. Test driving ideas about exclusivity and inclusiveness is equally important.

“Single sourcing materials is important, but it can get difficult if there is no competitiveness or at least the appearance of competitiveness,” says Tillmann. “When completing a project of this magnitude, there is no room for compromise during construction and there are no shortcuts for the contractor.”

The architects wanted the floors to be sloped so they would drain into the designated trenches. In some areas, however, the slope turned out to be more than was anticipated. The design called for one-eighth inch per one foot, but tolerances approached one-fourth inch per one foot in some areas. The excessive slope is problematic for moving heavy animal cages.

“One of the other things you need to prepare for is a Plan B for occupancy in case the type of research changes or a researcher leaves,” advises Kent. “What would you do to backfill in one of those scenarios? If you want to fill these buildings and be able to pay your operating costs, you need to be competitively priced.”

The University is expected to pay approximately $1 million (CAD) per year for utility costs to operate the MACF. All facilities in London have agreed to a standard per diem, allowing researchers to relocate without facing financial penalties.

“We also hope that planning for GLP will help with cost recovery because when you have these standards, you can conduct research that you cannot do in traditional facilities,” notes Kent. “We have already seen the benefits of that in the industrial contracts that are coming our way. When you build these facilities with government money to serve researchers, you have to serve the researchers first. Researchers who do translational research that requires industrial contracts would certainly come ahead of any others who are not associated with the University.”

By Tracy Carbasho