Tradeline's industry reports are a must-read resource for those involved in facilities planning and management. Reports include management case studies, current and in-depth project profiles, and editorials on the latest facilities management issues.
Latest Reports
School of Medicine at the University of South Carolina Greenville
The three-story, 90,0000-sf Health Sciences Education building, which houses the School of Medicine at the University of South Carolina Greenville, establishes a new paradigm in health education. Funded entirely by Greenville Health System, the school is designed to fulfill its mission of collaborative learning and “patient-precise personalized care.”
Repurposing Outdated Buildings to Create Animal Facilities
Aging, inadequate buildings can be redeveloped to create modern animal facilities as long as the design and construction team is armed with the right tools: an accurate assessment of the existing structure and systems, a clear understanding of the challenges they face and the programmatic and budgetary needs of the owners, and a process that allows for constant re-evaluation throughout design and construction.
Lab Flexibility Pays Off for University of Alaska Fairbanks
The 101,800-gsf, $88.6 million Margaret Murie Building at the University of Alaska Fairbanks is the capstone project of a new life sciences district designed to accommodate a boom in graduate students and research grants in the life sciences. The research and teaching facility, featuring a flexible laboratory design and a new shared-space culture, replaces UAF’s legacy biology facilities with 60 percent overall space efficiency and more than 80 percent year-round utilization of teaching spaces.
Rebounding Markets Drive Increased Near- to Mid-Term Institutional Construction Costs
End-of-year data from 2013 indicates that residential construction is on the rebound, with more than 1 million housing starts occurring in the fourth quarter. This is the first quarter that residential construction broke the 1 million mark since 2008. As a result, the national unemployment rate in the construction sector finally broke 10 percent at the end of 2013.
Rethinking Assumptions about Energy Consumption in Research Facilities
An evidence-based approach to designing and analyzing research laboratories—one that focuses on practical and interrelated reductions in energy use—offers long-term cost benefits that trump popular but often-underperforming symbolic gestures. Traditional thinking suggests that sustainable construction of research labs, which are among the most energy-intensive facilities in the world, costs many times more than the non-green alternative. Not so, say the designers at Payette, a Boston architectural firm.