How effective is your lab?

The inaugural S-Labs Awards Scheme has been set up to reward and encourage best practice in lab design and practice. Here Professor Peter James tells us why this is so important

Current and future best practice in laboratory design and operation is showcased in the 28 short listed applications, and additional presentations, in the inaugural S-Lab Awards scheme and Conference (York, June 12-13). S-Lab stands for ‘Safe, Successful and Sustainable Laboratories’ and is a not-for-profit initiative first developed to support improvement in university labs, but is now extending to commercial and public sector facilities as many challenges are shared, so that each sector can learn from the responses of others.

The initiative is a response to the financial constraints, requirements for improved productivity and performance, environmental and safety regulation and other pressures that are changing laboratory management and use in all sectors. S-Lab’s mission is to demonstrate that these changes are an opportunity to rethink laboratory practice in ways that create multiple benefits for owners, users and society, and enhance safety and environmental protection.

One central theme in the awards and conference is the need – and scope - for better utilisation of laboratory assets. Labs are expensive to build (often £2000 per square metre or more) and operate (internal charging just for space and services can be at least £300 per square metre), and usually contain high value equipment and/or materials. Colin Gilmore Merchant, VP and Head of Science and Technology at architects HOK (who are Platinum sponsors of the S-Lab Conference) believes that "good design can enable labs to improve utilisation, contain costs, reduce environmental impacts and still deliver high quality science and technology research and teaching. To achieve this, it’s vital to get a really good understanding of current requirements and working practices – but also to have a constructive dialogue with researchers and teachers which recognises that needs and personnel will change so that adaptability is very important.”

The shortlisted (like most of the following examples) Central Teaching Laboratory for Physical and Environmental Sciences at the University of Liverpool illustrates the scope for improvement, with a 48% utilisation rate which is more than double the average. Design for adaptability also enables high utilisation in the long term. The Royal Veterinary College’s new Teaching and Research Centre can use all its labs for either research or teaching, depending on need. And the University of St Andrews’ new Bioscience Research Building has a 3.3 metre square modular grid to make future changes easy, for example converting current open space write up areas into cellular offices.

The University of Central Lancashire’s JB Firth Building – housing Forensic Science and Pharmacy – has travelled a similar path, based on extensive research. Laboratory work patterns were analysed in detail to develop optimum layouts and reduce travel distances. It also used virtual environmental computer modelling software and dynamic thermal simulations for a complete year using CIBSE weather data to influence the building’s geometry, orientation, arrangement of spaces, glazed and solid areas, building envelope and servicing strategy.

Equipment utilisation and resource efficiency can also be increased by more common services to, and sharing of equipment between, science groups. Loughborough University’s Kit Catalogue scheme provides an online database of surplus equipment to encourage reuse.  Plymouth University has set up a new Systems Biology Centre to house high quality Proteonomics, Post-Genomics and DNA equipment as a central resource for researchers. And the University of Manchester’s Life Sciences Faculty now has Core Central Services for autoclaving, equipment servicing and PAT testing, glassware washing, stores and a ‘Media Kitchen’ (providing amongst other things 200 litres of sterile fly food a week) and is planning to extend them to the Faculty of Medicine and other organisations within an Oxford Road ‘Biomedical Corridor’. CCS Manager Rita Newbould believes that this provides “a much more efficient and effective use of resource than local provision. For example, central autoclaving allowed us to phase out over 10 local units, and to operate on very high loadings. However, even if the cost benefits are clear, many researchers will resist. You have to persevere, and build a trusting relationship with them, to succeed.”

One area of great progress is that of ventilation. The University of Warwick has safely reduced carbon emissions in its refurbished Chemistry Laboratory through reducing maximum air flows, low face velocity and variable air volume fume cupboards, heat recovery and time controls and night setback. Manchester Metropolitan University has taken similar measures in its John Dalton Laboratory, and is underpinning them with training and awareness campaigns in energy efficient and safe fume cupboard operation. There is also great scope to improve existing ventilation, as demonstrated by Imperial College’s Continuous Commissioning programme. This is a periodic testing and adjustment of building systems which is important because equipment performance can decline (or may never have been correct in the first place), and because lab occupancy and practices change. The initiative has resulted in air change volume adjustments; changing AHU temperature and time set-backs; more efficient plant; adjusting pump delivery to meet flow demands; improving filter efficiencies; and introducing occupancy controls. The result in the College’s Flowers Building’s has been a £48,159 reduction in annual energy costs, with a one year payback. Kevin Cope, Imperial’s Head of Building Operations, notes that “our actions will only be effective if we have the support of building users, who help us to ensure that there’s no risk to research, teaching or safety.”

Many of the features described above can also be designed into smaller scale refurbishments, as is shown by the short listed entries for Aston University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, Leeds Metropolitan University’s Biomedical Sciences Laboratory, Sheffield Hallam University’s Bioscience Department, and the University of Kent’s School of Physical Sciences.

Of course, people are central to laboratories and the Conference presentations and Awards short list – for example, Queen’s University Belfast’s new Centre for Infection and Immunology - highlight how creativity and performance can be increased through measures such as high visibility to enable people can see each other more easily, and maximum use of natural lighting and ventilation. Professor Jeff Errington, head of the Centre for Bacteriological Cell Biology in Newcastle University’s new Baddiley-Clarke Building  certainly believes that “our bright and attractive layout incorporating both cellular and open plan office space, allows staff to be adjacent to their labs and, at the same time, close to other colleagues. This enables and encourages very positive intellectual interactions.” This view was echoed by a delighted user in AstraZeneca’s new Etherow Building (the subject of a Conference keynote) who said that “It’s an enjoyable place to work with excellent opportunities to interact with colleagues in either an open or private manner. The design of the office space has encouraged interaction with new people from different disciplines and background which is very important for the collaborative working to which AstraZeneca aspires.”

The importance of people is also recognised in the Awards’ ‘Making a Difference’ category. At Plymouth University Dr. Mike Foulkes has been instrumental in setting up an ISO 9001 certified quality management system in Environmental Chemistry that has transformed working practices and training, and aided income generation. At UCL Professor Andrew Sella has shown through the example of water efficiency in Chemistry the difference that engaged academics can make to operational improvement. The University of Manchester’s Dr. Arthur Nicholas has played a key intermediary role between labs and Estates, and led the sector’s most developed cross-functional initiative to improve laboratory sustainability.  And at the University of St Andrews, one of the many improvements associated with John Smith – the shared Building Manager of a number of departments – has been a new design of fume cupboard that is saving tens of thousands of pounds in energy costs.

• Details of the S-Lab Conference and Awards can be obtained from www.effectivelab.org.uk. They have been organised in association with the National HE-STEM Programme (and the University of Bradford Greening STEM Legacy project which it is funding), with support from partners (ARMA, HEaTED, the Institute of Physics, the Institute of Science and Technology, the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the Society of Biology) and sponsors (HOK, Aecom, Critical Airflow and Waldner).

Contact pwjames@bradford.ac.uk