Construction Cost

Decisions about space size, type, and utilization must be based on data, but massive datasets can prove to be too much of a good thing if they are not translated into usable, understandable information. HDR's proprietary software, Data Wrangler, provides a platform for facilities planners, operators, and owners to visualize how data defines their spaces, and then manipulates that data in real time to demonstrate how to maximize the assets' potential. The result: Greater collaboration and faster decision-making.

Many college graduates remember, with varying degrees of fondness, the spartan cinder-block dorms of their youth. Today, when most universities are competing for students, the pressure is on to add amenities like e-sports rooms, private bathrooms, and walk-in closets. How can an institution stay competitive while still keeping costs down? The secrets include thorough planning and canny management of contingency.

Vermeulens has released its market outlook report for the third quarter of 2022. Key points include:

When the National Institutes of Health was designing two new cleanroom research facilities, it faced familiar development challenges, including space constraints on an already-crowded campus, strict cleanroom guidelines, and the urgency to get scientists in the lab. The solution: prefabricated modular units. Executed well, the modular units shorten the design and construction schedule, provide better-quality spaces than stick-built laboratories or those employing modular panels that require on-site construction, and perform better for the scientific researchers who work in them.

Vermeulens has released its market outlook report for the fourth quarter of 2021. Key points include:

Build the first 14 floors now, then add a 16-story tower a decade or so into the future. That was Northwestern University’s unconventional approach to the construction of the Louis A. Simpson and Kimberly K. Querrey Biomedical Research Center on the Chicago campus of its Feinberg School of Medicine. It wasn’t the only out-of-the-box decision that enabled the university to move forward with its vision of creating a 1.2 million-sf, next-generation research hub about 10 miles south of its main campus in Evanston. Similarly inventive is the ownership arrangement of the first half, which became the largest academic biomedical research building in the U.S. when it opened in 2019. One of the medical school’s three major hospital affiliates, Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, owns four of the nine lab floors (amounting to roughly 160,000 sf) and has easements to four-ninths of all the common space in the 625,000-sf structure.

Piramal Pharma Solutions broke ground in February of 2022 on a £45 million antibody drug conjugate (ADC) facility in Grangemouth, Scotland. Accommodating both manufacturing and aseptic fill/finish operations, the structure will provide additional capacity for the creation of targeted cancer treatments and other innovative therapies. Representing an expansion of Piramal's existing ADC campus, the project is being delivered by Merit using its FlexiPOD V4.0 platform.

While creating generic/flexible lab spaces that can be adapted to a variety of different research needs continues to be the preferred approach—especially in higher education buildings—there is also a growing need for highly specialized lab and support facilities designed for very specific types of research. As a result, facility designers are increasingly tasked with balancing the demand for both open generic/flexible labs and specialized lab spaces in a single building with the added challenge of improving energy efficiency, sustainability, and operating costs.

Pandemic-induced supply chain issues, increased commodity demand, and regional labor shortages are expected to drive annual construction cost escalation for large capital projects to record highs over the near- to mid-term future. While the compounded escalation rate for non-residential construction costs have trended around 3.5 percent annually for the past 30-plus years, many regions are expected to see double that escalation rate (or more) through at least 2023, according to current market forecasts.

Autolus Therapeutics broke ground in November of 2021 on a £66 million cell manufacturing facility in Stevenage in the United Kingdom. Accommodating the production of chimeric antigen receptor T-cells for the treatment of cancer, the 80,730-sf project is being built by Merit using modular offsite construction methodology to significantly accelerate the construction timeline and reduce carbon emissions.

Vermeulens has released its market outlook report for the third quarter of 2021. Key points include:

The University of Kansas (KU) faced a daunting challenge: more than 11 million sf of facilities in 150 buildings whose average age was 45 years and a deferred maintenance backlog exceeding $350 million. At the same time, the university’s strategic plan set a goal of increasing research and discovery, and the resulting campus master plan prioritized the need for new research facilities. Realizing that goal while addressing the existing challenges could have taken decades using traditional funding models. The solution? The Integrated Science Building, KU’s $180 million large-scale public-private partnership (P3) for interdisciplinary campus development, which is breaking new ground in funding models, integration, management structure, and fundraising activities. With this initiative, the university took a “great leap forward” in academic and research programs, design decisions, space allocations, programming, and critical infrastructure upgrades, as well as making a bold step with the project delivery.

Vermeulens has released its market outlook report for the second quarter of 2021. Key points include:

Demand for design services from U.S. architecture firms continues to grow at a vigorous pace, according to a report issued by the American Institute of Architects in June of 2021. AIA’s Architecture Billings Index score for May rose to 58.5 compared to 57.9 in April. Any score above 50 indicates an increase in billings, and May’s ABI score is one of the highest in the index’s 25-year history.

Caltech is planning to break ground in April of 2022 on the $100 million Resnick Sustainability Resource Center in Pasadena. Designed by the Yazdani Studio of CannonDesign, the 80,000-sf interdisciplinary facility will provide sophisticated laboratory environments for research programs in climate science, ecology, biosphere engineering, energy, biofuels, decomposable plastics, solar science, and water and environmental resources.