Protecting for the long term: Why wall and door protection starts at design

Wall and door protection in vivarium facilities is most effective — and most cost-efficient — when it is designed in from the start, not specified as an afterthought once the damage patterns become obvious. Session leaders present the collaborative protection strategy developed for Brown University's Danoff Laboratories vivarium, where architects, vendors, and contractors engaged early to develop a unified system of walls, doors, and hardware tailored to actual traffic patterns, equipment movement, and operational conditions. The session traces how that early coordination produced protection details that standard specifications alone would not have captured — and how the resulting system reduces long-term maintenance burden, contamination risk, and costly remediation.