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The five-story Wisconsin Energy Institute (WEI) serves as an interdisciplinary center of research on alternative energy, and as a living example of sustainable design.

Founders of the J. Craig Venter Institute’s new 45,000-sf laboratory facility in La Jolla, Calif., aspire to create a technological marvel that not only defies the tradition of energy-intensive biological laboratories, but that also initiates a new generation of facilities that have both low environmental impact and an excellent working environment. In its founder’s words, the Institute is “a unique design that will meld the environmental philosophies of our genomics research with the sustainability goals that I believe must be part of all of our lives.”

The following is a compilation of responses to a survey that asked individuals responsible for planning, design, operations, and maintenance of high-containment facilities to rank their priorities for 2014 and make open-ended comments regarding those priorities. The issues identified in this survey will be the focus of Tradeline’s upcoming conference—The 2014 International Conference on Biocontainment Facilities—on April 10‐11 in Scottsdale, Arizona.

The respondents ranked their overall priorities as follows:

A new approach to space planning based on Lean design concepts improves space utilization processes and helps reduce building and operating expenses for academic, research, and healthcare facilities by achieving maximum efficiency with minimum construction.

Located on the southern end of the Kaiser Permanente Fontana medical campus, the new 490,000-sf, seven-story teaching hospital and inpatient tower replaces an existing main hospital, some of which will be converted for outpatient use. With more than 500 physicians and 4,400 support staff serving more than 440,000 members, the 314-private-bed hospital includes a 28-private-bed neonatal intensive care unit and a 51-room emergency department.