Diagnostic Construction

New Research Facilities Required Some Experimenting

By Lesley Hensell

Preventing birth defects. Curing cancer. Defending against bioterrorism.

The science behind these lofty goals requires more than a simple laboratory environment. That's why the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas has embarked on a three-part, $307.6 million construction project encompassing 1.1 million sq. ft.

Known on campus as Phase IV, the project's most substantial component is an 850,000-sq.-ft., 16-story biomedical research building scheduled for completion in November. The 35,000-sq.-ft. Moncrief Radiation Oncology Center, which offers both diagnostic and treatment facilities, opened its doors in January. And the 150,000-sq.-ft. building housing biomedical research in advanced imaging should be ready for occupancy by March 2006, said Kirby Vahle, vice president for facilities management at UT Southwestern.

"Nationwide, you'll find that most academic medical centers are expanding," Vahle said. "The same is true at UT Southwestern. We've had a substantial increase in biomedical activities over the past several years, and that's continuing to be the case. The campus has been in a significant growth mode since 1988, when we were at 2.8 million sq. ft. Once we complete this phase, we'll have a total of 8 million sq. ft. of space."

As technology grows ever more complicated, so do the requirements of maintaining sensitive laboratory environments. Constructing such facilities requires special considerations regarding pipes, wires, vibrations and other seemingly minute details.

The biomedical research building is a cast-in-place concrete structure with pre-cast skin. One goal of the construction team was to maximize open floor space by using as few interior columns as possible. This also makes the building more flexible in the future, since interior spaces can be more easily reconfigured, said Sonny LaRue, area project manager for Dallas-based Austin Commercial LP, the construction manager-at-risk on the project.

"The structural engineer employed a poured-in-place, pre-cast system where conventional pre-cast panels are used as one of the sides on the forms," LaRue said. "When you look at the building, you wouldn't know that the pre-cast was set in place. The forms were connected to it, and then the column and spandrel beams were poured as an integral part of the structural frame system."

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As a result, the construction team used smaller columns and larger bay spacing, giving UT Southwestern more open areas for the laboratory spaces, LaRue said. The entire complex was designed with a rigid frame, which guarantees little to no vibration throughout the structure. This is an unusual necessity, since vibrations could negatively impact sensitive scientific studies.

"I think the building is one-of-a-kind," he added. "You don't see very many of these biomedical research centers built very often."

Large work spaces and sparse columns were just one part of ensuring the research building remained flexible.

"At UT Southwestern, people using these facilities are scientists and Nobel Prize winners," LaRue said. "If they get a grant and need to expand, they will be moving people and adding equipment."

Typically, this means leaving plenty of space between floors so that pipes and wires can be configured and reconfigured throughout the years.

"Owners are really trying to maximize their dollars by controlling floor-to-floor heights of their buildings," LaRue said. "It's easy to make the floor heights 17 and a half or 17 ft., but the higher they are, the more money the building costs. So we want to pack more into the space above the ceilings and maintain lower floor-to-floor heights, like 16 and a half feet. Every quarter-inch and half-inch counts."

Original plans for the biomedical sciences building laid out floor-to-floor heights of 17 and a half feet.

"We said that we could get away with 16 and a half feet," LaRue said. "They said, 'Sure. Show us. You've got to be kidding me."

And LaRue did, thanks to three-dimensional software that coordinates mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems. The software gives users a detailed picture of the pipes and wires running at any location in the building. Each system is color-coordinated, making it easy to check a valve or add a device, LaRue said.

"The university is constantly changing and adding to its research facilities," he said. "This will make it much easier to make changes in a cost-effective manner."

Austin Commercial also blazed new trails when constructing more than 200,000 sq. ft. of the animal resource centers. These research laboratories must be absolutely air-tight to ensure the integrity of the research going on within, LaRue said.

"Typically, an animal resource center has block walls," he said. "They like to come in and hose down the animal cells every year or two."

But the concrete block comes with a problem. It is prone to hairline cracks, whether in the blocks themselves or the masonry between them, LaRue said. These cracks allow in microscopic animals and other particles that can put research projects in jeopardy.

So Austin Commercial suggested using fiberglass-inlaid drywall instead. The material is high-density, impact-resistant and impervious to water.

"They were very skeptical, including the architect," LaRue said. So his team mocked up a room using the drywall and invited UT Southwestern personnel to bring in their equipment.

"We asked them to run the equipment into the walls as hard and fast as they could," LaRue said. "We even gave them a hammer to hit it. And it didn't make a dent. They even accused us of putting plaster on the wall. So we took a chainsaw, cut through the wall and showed them it was drywall. They accepted it then and there."

The result was a savings in the order of a half-million dollars, plus a cut of approximately four months off of construction time.

"The best part was that we did it on our own. Nobody asked for it. We took it upon ourselves to say that we had a better way to skin this cat," LaRue said.

Perhaps the most complicated part of construction was the advanced imaging center, Vahle said. Originally a small facility built in 1988, the center contains several high-field research magnets. These created a logistical difficulty for contractors, who had to build all around the magnets without interfering with the associated research.

But complexity permeates any large-scale construction project, LaRue said.

Key Players
Owner: University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas
Architect: Omniplan Inc., Dallas
Construction Manager: Austin Commercial LP, Dallas
Structural Engineer: Datum Engineers Inc., Dallas
Civil Engineering:Halff Associates Inc., Dallas