Installing the systems required in modern laboratory buildings are frequently a complex issue.

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The intricacies of the $120 million Microbial Sciences Building at the University of Wisconsin at Madison go beyond exhaust hoods.

For instance, the six-story structure had to be shoehorned around the campus' historic Hiram Smith Hall and built over a working electrical substation.

The facility had to meet post-Sept. 11 security requirements.

And, an open environment was required so ideas could be exchanged and people could interact in the academic programs the building will house. These include bacteriology, medical microbiology and food microbiology.

Because of these programs, the building will include a crystal growth chamber, vivarium and research kitchen.

The 330,000-gross-sq.-ft. structure broke ground in December 2004 and is scheduled for completion in May 2007. Portions of the structure should be ready for lab installation by spring.

A seventh-story mechanicals penthouse will top the facility, and four underground parking levels will contain about 150 spaces.

The university has big hopes for the building. It is intended to keep the school competitive and attract top-drawer faculty and students capable of pulling in research grants.

Underground Surprises

Peter Heaslett, engineer and project manager with the university, said site issues included an area of poor soils and accommodating the structures and activities on and around the area.

"We encountered some soft soils to the north of the existing substation and had to redesign some footings and drill some extra caissons on that side," added Jerry Wheaton, project manager for lead contractor C.D. Smith Construction of Fond du Lac.

Spread footings had been planned for the affected area of the structure, but the unplanned redesign called for drilled caissons, which were being used in other areas of the building that required deep footings.

Heaslett said the redesign and addition of caissons cost time and money because the soil in that small area was "moving, with a lot of water coming through from a sand layer." Crews are still working to make up the time.

An electrical substation, which provides power to approximately 25 percent of the campus, was located in E.B. Fred Hall, the building that stood on the site when the project began. The substation had to remain functional throughout the demolition of E.B. Fred, as well as throughout the construction of the new building.

The upper levels of E.B. Fred were torn off first and then the rest of the structure demolished to leave the substation intact and running. A roofing membrane was put over the substation and enclosed in a mostly underground bunker.

All went well until the roofing membrane started leaking.

"A little water got into the substation and caused a small failure of one of the electrical components," Heaslett said. Redundancy in the substation kept the power on, while crews quickly repaired the membrane.

Historic Hiram Building

The construction team also worried about the historic Hiram Smith building during excavation and foundation work.

With the new structure wrapping around two sides of Hiram Smith and an old crack in its foundation, the historic structure had to be monitored closely to be sure there was no settlement.

Heaslett said the old structure "held up very well," but there was a lateral water break.

"Water started seeping through the shoring and weakening the soil," he added.

Scott Kramer, partner with Plunkett Raysich Architects in Milwaukee, said there was a potential for collapse, "but the contractor was onsite and dealt with it quickly."

Heaslett said crews had to "shore up the shoring" with dirt at first and then with soil nails.

Additional site issues include a $25 million utility project going across part of the Microbial Science Building's construction fence.

"A central campus utility project is bringing a whole host of utilities through that part of the campus, so streets are torn up all around us," Heaslett said.

The amount of construction going on in a limited area of the busy campus has resulted in traffic backups.

Demands on Design

The microbial building had to accommodate some conflicting demands on its design.

"Security is a very big deal since Sept. 11," Kramer said. "All security regulations for laboratory facilities have changed and keep changing on a monthly basis. It's hard to keep up with the regulations."

He has worked closely with the university's security department to meet regulations, but the faculty had different desires for the building.

"I think it's disappointing for researchers who are coming from an era of no security and students just walking into their labs, that there are all these barriers to keep the students away," Kramer said.

Working with faculty members >> from all three departments, Plunkett Raysich architects came up with a series of neighborhoods that will define and unite the three departments that will share the building. They also designed several atria that will provide neutral space where people can interact outside the labs.

The labs themselves are designed for flexibility and can be expanded when a project needs more space and/or staff.

"One of the other challenges we had is that this was one of the first major buildings in the state designed under the new IBC (International Building Code) adopted in 2002," Kramer said. "Trying to deal with atrium space and the code was untested territory."

He added about a dozen firms consulted on the project to handle some of the building's specific requirements such as smoke control systems for the atria.

Thermodynamic modeling was used to show how the atria would react in the event of a fire. The computerized models showed such things as fire at different temperatures, the smoke spread the fire would create, how quickly the smoke cleared and how long it took the average person to evacuate.

Working on the university campus has presented an unforeseen advantage in the way of two interactive Web cams on the site. The cameras are accessible and moveable from offsite computers via the Web.

Web cams that the university's Heaslett has used in the past have been static, but the interactive cameras have occasionally allowed him to take a look at things on the site and answer questions without leaving his desk.

Heaslett added that another advantage on this project, which was bid by the university to multiple prime contractors rather than to a general and subs, has been a high level of cooperation between the among contractors on the site.

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