FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation & Research

The FDA CBER project consolidated several local area facilities onto the FDA's campus in White Oak, Md. The two concrete laboratory buildings feature a glass-and-metal-panel exterior, and the office buildings are a concrete structure with a brick façade. A large skylight creates a central atrium to connect the buildings. The scope of work also included extensive landscaping of several courtyards on the premises.

The laboratory areas are served by seven 100% outside air units with paired heat recovery exhaust air fan systems which use glycol energy recovery coils to recover waste energy from the laboratory exhaust air to preheat or pre-cool outside air entering the facility. The individual laboratory spaces are served by air valves which serve fume hood and general exhaust needs energy efficiently by matching exhaust air volumes to supply air needs for ventilation and temperature conditioning while maintaining building pressurization requirements. Many of the spaces are integrated with the building lighting system occupancy sensor network to automatically reduce ventilation air and reduce temperature conditioning set points when spaces are unoccupied for long periods of time. Air handling system equipment is grouped such that if there is a failure of a single unit, parallel equipment automatically picks up the lost capacity, maintaining required space conditions. The BSL3 (Bio Level Safety 3) laboratories have dedicated, redundant exhaust fans, with redundant power feeds backed up by a separate UPS (Uninterruptable Power Source) and “Quick Start” generators in the Central Utility Plant. All of this is monitored by the BAS system.

The facility has a large vivarium area served by three 100% outside air units with paired heat recovery exhaust air fan systems that use glycol energy recovery coils to recover waste energy from the laboratory exhaust air. The individual laboratory spaces are served by air valves which serve fume hood and general exhaust needs energy efficiently by matching exhaust air volumes to supply air needs for ventilation and temperature conditioning while maintaining building pressurization requirements. In addition, animal holding spaces are monitored by an air quality monitoring system which sends information to the Johnson Controls Metasys DDC control system. This information regarding total Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) in the holding spaces is used to automatically reduce the amount of fresh air into spaces to maintain safe ventilation rates when spaces are less than fully occupied. The reduced air volume means fewer requirements for heating, cooling, and humidity control, saving significant energy. Air handling system equipment is grouped such that if there is a failure of a single unit, parallel equipment automatically picks up the lost capacity, maintaining required space conditions.

Office areas and support spaces for the facility are served by three mixed air single path variable volume air handling units. These units make use of air side economizer dampers to maximize energy efficiency by mixing outside air with return air as required to reduce the amount of mechanical cooling required to meet required space conditions. In the conditioned spaces, DDC controlled VAV terminal units with individual reheat coils operate to provide required cooling and heating efficiently.

Mock Ups

A mock-up of the lab casework was completed three months before fabrication, which was invaluable to finalizing the design and constructability issues. Hundreds of the future laboratory end users were toured through the mock-up resulting in dozens of changes and design considerations. The process was also key in determining the best sequence of the activities when building out the remaining laboratory spaces.

Coordination Efforts

Throughout construction Clark coordinated with a number of owner contractors, including telephone connectivity, security, data installers, network programmers, furniture contractors, and laboratory equipment installers.

This coordination work took place on an active campus without disruption to its ongoing operations. The project team also installed, trouble-shot, and coordinated the successful operation and integration of specialty access/hardware requirements at nearly 100 doors across all three buildings.

Sustainability

All three buildings are striving for LEED Gold. A Sustainability Management System (SMS) educational kiosk is located in the 3rd level main lobby of building 52. This web-hosted interactive system uses intuitive animated diagrams and user-controller graphs via a 32” touch screen user interface terminal to support education for sustainability. The Energy Dashboard engages building occupants and visitors by describing the building’s high performance features and the flows of energy and resource use.

The application is available via the touch-screen display. It provides Real-Time Monitoring of Total Electricity Use, Total Water Use, Lighting Distribution Systems Energy Use and HVAC Systems Energy Use is provided along with comparison with similar building baseline energy use and historical comparison for the facility itself. An Interactive LEED Checklist screen shows which energy credit points were earned by the facility to attain LEED Gold certification.