It follows that making it easier for researchers and others to perform their work will also make them more productive, which in turn will help push staffing costs down.

“The best way to enhance staff efficiency is to make the facility itself more efficient,” explains Kornberg principal Mike Mulvey, based in the firm’s San Diego office. “Taking the routine or highly technical work out of the lab frees up scientists to focus on their cutting-edge research.”

Investing the effort to design efficient buildings with well-organized labs supported by a well-reasoned services scheme has a big payoff: attracting and retaining scientists who value their time and are committed to their endeavors.

“By minimizing drudgery and repetitive tasks, they are more likely to enjoy working there an extra hour a day, which dwarfs the cost of all the other spending categories,” Kornberg remarks. “That is what we are using the centralized services approach to accomplish.”

Benefits of Centralization

Since the early 1990s, the list of services Kornberg has clustered under a centralized scheme has expanded to include more entries than there are letters in the alphabet. The services can be divided into two types, those that support research directly, such as NMRs, mass spectrometers, and cell culture; and the more basic functions like glasswash, RODI (reverse osmosis distilled ionized) water, and shipping/receiving. Both types have been growing steadily in size and complexity, in some cases occupying up to 60 percent of the facility.

In addition to saving money, there are several other advantages to derive from a centralized approach. Housing specialized equipment in designated communal areas streamlines maintenance and servicing and cuts down on utility distribution. It draws scientists out of their labs, encouraging them to interact with colleagues as they travel through the building. From a design perspective, it allows labs to be more flexible, so as research programs change—as they always do—reconfiguration isn’t necessary.

The process of crafting a central services strategy begins early in the facility development and planning phase. Many of the components entail specialized modifications such as ceiling height, access, or service piping. Still, such provisions constitute a tiny fraction of the overall cost, and the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks, Mulvey insists.

It does take a certain amount of outreach to get all users “on board,” as he puts it. Investigators like to have control over all aspects of their research, Mulvey acknowledges, but with good reason: standards have to be maintained. Yet it is both expensive and impractical for each scientist to have—and manage—the same specialized equipment. Sharing the cost of high-tech instruments and services makes the most of limited resources and allows grant money to be spent most effectively.

Another point in favor of centralization is the growing complexity of the equipment itself. When researchers bring their samples to an electron microscope, for instance, they can be more productive if they don’t have to spend time on details like set-up and calibration. A communal instrument scheme has the benefit of expert support from skilled technicians who take care of these important tasks.

Extrapolating that concept down the services hierarchy to the simple level, Kornberg remarks, “The people whose time is most precious are not washing glassware, they are working on their experiments.”

Similar benefits accrue in many other areas, he continues. Centralized gas dispensing cuts down on traffic and reduces the wear and tear of transporting the cumbersome tanks throughout the building. Occasionally, some functions don’t warrant centralization. For example, if most researchers want point-of-use water polishing, it may be more cost effective to provide it locally and save the expense of large reservoirs and elaborate distribution piping.

Forging the Strategy

Forging a centralized services strategy requires good relationships and open lines of communication between the planning team and facility users. One imperative, say both architects, is a clear articulation of the scope, goals, and expansion needs of the building.

“We need to ask the right questions: ‘What needs to be there?’ ‘What are reasonable provisions for future expansion?’ For example, if you oversize shaft space on construction, it’s the least expensive real estate in the building. Five years later, if you need extra shaft space to bring in a new program, it can be the most expensive part of a renovation. Putting thought into what is needed for anticipated growth is money well spent,” Mulvey comments.

It’s also essential to assess the physical criteria and determine the spatial requirements of centralized equipment. Items like large cagewashers and glasswash units need pits and extra overhead clearance. NMR placement needs to take gauss lines into account (although the newer, fully shielded units diminish this need, Mulvey notes). Sometimes, “centralization” shouldn’t be taken literally. Certain devices are best located remotely for service access or isolation.

Then there’s the matter of staff organization and development.

“One of the things to realize is that these services, the core facilities, are an integral part of the research program,” Mulvey advises. “The people who work there are part of the research team. If we put care and effort into the design of these areas, we can make sure that they work well for their staff. These highly specialized facilities are not ‘back-of-the-house.’”

Clarifying client expectations helps earn researcher support for a centralized approach.

“For example, sharing water polishers gets researchers thinking as part of the team, looking at not just what happens with spending in their particular research program, but in all the various facilities that go along to support that,” Mulvey observes.

Design priorities are often influenced by the desire to get a building up and running as quickly as possible, but Mulvey urges the need for balance.

“We have to look ahead to the next 20 to 30 years. If we can find ways to make a building more efficient over that period, there will be more research happening, and the payback will be many times more than what is spent up front,” he maintains.

Four Project Models

For all the guidelines on establishing a centralized services strategy, the architects emphasize that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Even with generic labs pared back to just benchtop research, each facility has unique needs spawned by a spectrum of circumstances, from campus organization to specific research missions.

Kornberg highlights three projects that came on line between 1994 and 2003, and one still under construction, to illustrate the various factors at play in the facilities’ design and how they translated into individualized schemes.

“These four projects span an interesting time period, and they also have central services for four very different reasons,” he says.

Completed in 1994, the 160,000-gsf genetics and molecular biology institute at the University of Louis Pasteur (ULP), on a satellite campus in Strasbourg, France, adopted a centralized strategy to put an end to space imbalances. Instead of being in the lab, specialized equipment resides in several areas clustered around the core and stacked in two towers, well served by elevators to eliminate any wait time. This configuration allows all laboratories to be exactly the same, so new arrivals, whether graduate student, post-doc, or PI, can be located anywhere in the building.

Kornberg makes the point that the extra elevator capacity has trimmed travel time to any point on campus to no more than two minutes. “People are not stratified or isolated,” he confirms.

Designed with Cesar Pelli, the Cleveland Clinic Research Institute, whose last phase was completed in 2000, serves as a translational facility for the physicians who practice in the campus’ 20-plus clinical buildings. In contrast to ULP, where core services are spread among various floors, in this 250,000-sf research center they are ganged in the basement and on the first floor, where a commons and cafeteria encourage interaction, a major goal. Building occupants have convenient access to the centrally located bank of elevators, and any inside destination is, again, no more than a two-minute walk. Generic labs provide the flexibility for biomedical research projects that were unspecified at the time of construction.

On the Pasadena, Calif., campus of the California Institute of Technology, the service-intensive Broad Center features three floors of generic chemistry and biology research labs and two basement levels housing specialized equipment and a vivarium. With only a few principal investigators identified before building completion, flexibility was a high priority driving the communal services configuration. The need for access to the NMR’s large bore magnets, which will need replacing over time, led to its location below-grade at the edge of the building, topped by a patio that can be removed.

Within a year of completion, in 2003, the 125,000-sf center was completely filled with occupants, easily accommodated in new quarters regardless of their research specialty in chemistry or biology.

Representing the pinnacle of a core services strategy across the global research landscape, the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST), in Okinawa, Japan, is slated to see first phase occupancy in 2009. On ultimate completion, the self-contained campus will encompass two million sf of space under one roof.

OIST’s centralized approach is a natural extension of the government-supported mission to create a premier institution that will attract leading researchers from around the world.

“If they have the best NHP [non-human primate] brain-imaging facility in the world, the best NHP brain scientists will be interested in going there. The core facility is really driving the quality of this facility,” Kornberg relates.

By Nicole Zaro Stahl