Situated on a 10-acre campus in the heart of the city, the Institute was recently hailed as the "Taj Mahal of medical research" by a noted scientist who recently moved his lab to the facility.

"Hearing this directly from one of our researchers is the best feedback we could ask for," says Jeff Johnson, who served as both project manager and construction manager for the Stowers Institute. Ironically, Johnson adds that despite this type of praise the Institute's actual lab space really isn't all that unusual. What is, however, extremely unusual are the numerous amenities built into the Institute for researchers, the facility's impressive design, and its private endowment, which ranks among the largest of its kind worldwide.

Private Endowment Allows More Control

In 1994, Jim and Virginia Stowers of Kansas City formed the Stowers Institute and created its supporting endowment with an initial gift of $50 million. Following additional gifts from the Stowers, combined with investment growth, the endowment now totals more than $1.6 billion.

The significant funding has helped the Institute to attract scientists from all over the world— who may never have previously heard of Kansas City, let alone thought of it as a hub for research. Eventually the Institute intends to house a total of 500 people, including 60 principal researchers, research assistants, and administrative staff.

"Our status as a private entity allowed us to challenge many of the norms of project management," says Johnson, who had the added pressure of working for owners who are also his in-laws. But he points out that it also helped to be a family member. He knew first-hand about the Stowers' high level of commitment and enthusiasm for the project since both are cancer survivors themselves.

Negotiated Contracts, No Bids

The Institute went from concept to completion in a three-year period, an accomplishment for which Johnson credits the professionalism of his project team. He and the Stowers literally hand-picked the participants, forgoing the typical bidding process mandated by publicly funded projects.

"We chose exactly who we wanted to work with based on merit and then controlled costs by using a negotiated contract structure," says Johnson. "We decided not to open up the work for bids because low bid is just that, a 'low' bid, not necessarily low cost."

Johnson employed two architectural firms, hiring both on hourly services contracts. He chose PGAV Architects of Kansas City to design the building's exterior skin and site work since he specifically wanted a local firm that would feel the added responsibility of having to drive by and live with the design everyday.

San Francisco-based MBT Architects did the lab planning and interior work. The general contractor, J.E. Dunn of Kansas City, was hired as a negotiated contractor at a three percent fee, which Johnson describes as a good way to control overall project costs.

"We also decided to negotiate and hire all of the subcontractors at the outset of the project to keep a better handle on both cost and quality issues," says Johnson. "We wanted them to be a part of the entire process, including initial design discussions."

AD Jacobson of Kansas City served as the mechanical subcontractor and Broadway Electric, also of Kansas City, did the electrical work.

Another cost-control measure that Johnson adopted was the use of an Owner Carried Insurance Policy (OCIP).

"Using OCIP meant that all the subcontractors left their insurance at the door once they started on our project," says Johnson. "Instead, if they had any claim, our insurance carrier paid for it. If there was ever an issue on whose fault it was, it was our fault."

Building a Magnet

Institute managers knew it would take more than an abundant private endowment to lure world-class scientists to Kansas City. They wanted to build what Johnson calls a "magnet" facility to attract leading researchers from all over the country and abroad and create a critical mass of talent for basic research into disease.

The effort started with the purchase of a vacant hospital in the heart of the cultural area, near the city's major museums and the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

"More than half of the city's residents had some sort of connection to this hospital since it had operated for more than 60 years," says Johnson. "We felt it was important from a community standpoint to keep a sense of remodel to the project, even though it would have been much easier just to start over."

Instead, Johnson and his construction team literally cut the existing building in two and hauled one half away, including one of the hospital's parking garages. Then they erected a new building to tie the remaining structures together. To overcome elevation differences and give the facility a uniform appearance, they decided to "bury" one side of the old hospital's first floor below grade and create a new central courtyard that now serves as the main entrance to the Institute.

"Despite these extensive renovations, we were able to keep the exact same building footprint," says Johnson. "Putting the new Institute right back in the same place where the hospital had been made it much easier to secure community and municipal approval of our plans."

Johnson notes that the Institute"s exterior design has also attracted attention from the surrounding community as well as researchers. Since Kansas City is known as the "City of Fountains," the Institute has a west-campus water garden featuring a series of connecting geyser fountains, ponds, and a 30-foot waterfall that cascades down the entire back of the building.

Unique Office and Lab Layout

Private funding enables the Institute to offer its researchers office environments that are more than three times the size of the maximum space allowed under the National Institutes of Health (NIH) laboratory guidelines. Typical offices at the Stowers Institute range from 450 to 600 sf, in contrast to NIH-funded offices that provide a maximum of only 120 sf for each senior scientist.

Currently, 12 office suites are located in the four corners of the top three stories of the Institute's five floors. Another 28 suites will be added in the 200,000 sf slated for build-out by January 2005, thus accommodating a total of 40 principal investigators. Each suite includes an office, personal library, conference room, and break area. Junior scientists are assigned to similar environments, with the exception that two individuals share an office and their suite has no conference room.

According to Johnson, it is the placement of the laboratories that truly distinguishes the Institute.

"Most research facilities intentionally keep all of the labs together and then group the offices in another part of the building," says Johnson. "At Stowers, the labs are attached directly to researchers' offices to encourage interaction and to improve the overall efficiency of movement and the flow of information."

This arrangement gives principal investigators approximately 2,500 sf of lab space immediately contiguous to their offices. Technicians are afforded a 12-foot bench and a five-foot desk in the lab.

Each lab within the Institute features wood casework, epoxy countertops, fume hoods, lockers, glassware cabinets, ergonomic lighting, utilities (natural gas, compressed air, vacuum, water, power and data), and centralized CO2, nitrogen, and liquid nitrogen.

Thanks to its generous endowment, the Institute provides a number of centralized services to support the work of building occupants, reducing demands on individual research budgets and eliminating the need for duplicate equipment. An imaging center houses three confocal microscopes used to analyze subjects three-dimensionally and a recently purchased mass spectrography machine to break down and analyze proteins. Core labs devoted to the study of bioinfomatics, histology, genomics, proteomics, transgenics, and embryonic stem cell research (although not human stem cells at this time) also provide services to scientists focusing on other disciplines.

Other Amenities

In addition to the laboratories and office suites, the Institute has a 200-seat auditorium on the first floor with more than $2 million in audio-visual equipment, including a three-station interpreter booth with remote headsets for presentations in multiple languages. The auditorium also has electronic white boards and twin rear-projection capabilities to facilitate comparative analysis discussions.

A collaborative agreement to utilize library resources at the University of Missouri-Kansas City greatly reduced the need for similar space within the facility. Instead, the Institute built what Johnson calls a "digital library."

"There is a wall of journals and one bookshelf, which officially makes the space a library," said Johnson. "The emphasis, however, is really on retrieval of information electronically."

To accommodate this, the Institute is connected to Internet II, a newly introduced online option with faster speeds and larger data files available only to scientific and educational institutions. The Institute's library is wired with an extensive network of fiber optic cabling and underground pipes that link to the nearby university.

Lessons Learned

In summary, Johnson offers some lessons learned for making projects of this scale happen on such a fast-track schedule:

• Remember that there is a significant difference between low bid and low price. Before automatically starting the bidding process, consider selecting the team based purely on merit and references.

• If the project cost is at least $40 million, it's worth investigating the use of an owner-carried insurance program. "You won't pay any more than you normally pay for insurance, and if your safety is better, you'll pay less," he advises. "We went 320 days without an accident with 500 people on this construction site and saved about $300,000 in insurance premiums."

• Consider the value of unfinished space. For instance, the Institute's two unfinished buildings (totaling 300,000 sf) have become a major recruiting tool. "In the scientific world, space is always at a premium, so it is probably our best proof for the researchers that we are willing to live up to our promise that we will work to give them whatever they need to produce good results," he concludes.

By Amy Cammell