Sustainable Laboratory User Manual Working Group

Industry Leads: Adana Johns, Christopher Kleingartner, and Jacob Werner, Perkins and Will

Purpose

The Sustainable Laboratory User Manual working group was launched in October 2019 to create a new tool to enable sustainable laboratory operations. The manual is envisioned as:

  • A living document that describes a facility’s purpose, functions, infrastructure, operations, and intended uses
  • Containing guidance for owners and operators to enable them to intelligently use, maintain, and renovate the laboratory over time
  • Capturing information about the facilities design and infrastructure, including capabilities, limitations, flexibility, adaptability, sustainability, and resilience
  • Expandable to capture other information as desirable and useful to the facility owner or operator
  • Providing a flexible systems to collect and store common design and construction documents without duplicating them, including the Owners Project Requirements (OPR), Basis of Design (BOD), construction drawings, specifications, construction submittals, Building Information Models (BIM), Operations Manuals (O&Ms), commissioning reports, Testing and Balancing (TAB) reports, and other closeout documents
  • Made up of systems, processes, and tools that are easy to use, flexible to change over time, open source, and portable to future owners, operators, and users

Focus Groups

The working group has identified initial focus groups for specific content development. Focus groups will develop systems, processes, forms, and tools to capture, record, and make topic information accessible for laboratory owner and operators.

  1. Laboratory Planning
  2. Laboratory Equipment
  3. Building Design—workplace strategy, amenities, adjacencies, flexibility, expandability, building and development masterplan
  4. Buildings Systems—power, air, gases (capacity, redundancy, and adaptability)
  5. Policy/Reporting/Other Operational Programs
  6. Software Interface/Maintenance

Get Involved

This working group invites individuals and organizations committed to helping I2SL develop the Laboratory User Manual. Members are encouraged to contribute their expertise, energy, and ideas. The main group currently holds monthly conference calls; smaller subgroups are created for specific tasks and may hold more frequent calls or meetings as needed. To get involved, please contact Adana Johns or Christopher Kleingartner.

Activities

On June 2, 2020, the working group held it's first meeting via conference call with committee chairs to discuss actions for the upcoming months. View the meeting presentation and the meeting minutes.