Renovation Revisited

Getting to a single-phase renovation

A phased renovation adds millions of dollars to a budget but adds no value to the completed project. These millions come from the extended General Conditions and from the cost of creating temporary measures to ensure life safety, access and continuity of services to the occupied areas. In this context, it is worth spending $1 million to $2 million on swing space to save $7 million to $8 million on the actual project. At first glance, swing space can be hard to find, so a creative and flexible approach is needed:

• Don’t expect the swing space to be ideal. Be prepared to accept loss of contiguity and adjacency for a finite, short period of time.

• Don’t expect the swing space to be the perfect size. Compression often is a necessary compromise.

• Convert under-utilized spaces to swing space. Library stacks within lab buildings and semester-dependent teaching labs often can be consolidated to free up space.

• Time your renovation to coincide with the end of new construction projects for optimal swing space opportunity.

• Consider leasing space from local companies or adjacent institutions.

• Don’t rule out the possibility of taking space from other departments and divisions.

There’s gold in them thar walls

Figure 2. Needed chemistry lab renovations also offered an opportunity to correct circulation issues at the Univ. of Chicago. Click here to enlarge.

The Univ. of Chicago made this realization when deciding to renovate its Searle Chemistry Laboratory, a 90,000-ft2 building from the late 1960s. The university determined that a shorter schedule—made possible by swing space opportunities and the latent value of the building’s limestone exterior and concrete structure—could yield a faster result at a fraction of the cost of a new building (15 months/$32 million verse an estimated 24 months/$50 million).

Critical to the cost savings was a $1 million compression and relocation project for three faculty members and for core instrumentation that allowed a single phase of renovation. Through a temporary compression strategy applied to the chemistry faculty, one member was accommodated nearby in the recently completed Gordon Center for Integrated Sciences. The other two investigators and the core instrumentation suite of mass spec, X-ray diffraction and NMR were accommodated in renovations to the adjacent Jones Laboratory (Figure 2).

One of the problems inherent to the original Searle envelope design was that it formed a 200-ft barrier between the traditional quadrangles and the westward expansion of the campus. A new pass-through entry need to be introduced into the midblock of the building, creating a major campus connection from east to west. While preserving the majority of the envelope, the design team also trained a critical eye on the inadequacies of the original building. Using renovation to correct the shortcomings of a previous era’s poor planning is an effective technique for enhancing broader campus design issues.

Turn constraints into assets

Another technique employed by the Univ. of Chicago was to take advantage of existing constraints. The electrical system of the building provided one such opportunity. An existing electrical vault in an adjacent building fed the Searle Building and had a limited amount of capacity. Rather implementing a full electrical service upgrade, the design engineer identified a set amount of power capacity for plug load once the MEP core load was established. The architects then worked with the user group to ensure the equipment and plug layouts in the lab fit within the limitation. This reverse-engineering avoided an expense that would ordinarily be required with a less-thorough need analysis.

Figure 3. A section diagram of the Brown Univ. adaptive reuse project shows zoning of capabilities. Click here to enlarge.

Most renovation projects involve sub-optimal buildings with numerous deficiencies and do not have the flexibility of contemporary lab design. By identifying the zones of capability and locating functions appropriately, institutions can work with what they have rather than spend time and money creating new, perfect locations.

Not long ago, Brown Univ. had a pressing need for laboratory space due to ongoing delays with a large project and had acquired a former jewelry manufacturing building off-campus. The building had been recently renovated for office use but had a mixture of structural systems, irregular floor heights, non-orthogonal column grids, and small floor plates. The program included biomedical labs, chemistry and analytical labs including a 600-mHz NMR, and a vivarium, as well as an aggressive schedule and budget, for which Brown chose a design/build delivery method.

The design approach provides several useful lessons in the way that it defined the following zones of capability:

• Find a small zone of stable space for critical instrumentation. NMRs, microscopy and other vibration-sensitive devices usually work well at ground level; if there is high-bay space in an annex, installation and gauss fields are easier as well (Figure 3).

Figure 4. In an adaptive reuse project where existing conditions are less than ideal, placing offices in unusual or constrained spaces is often the best strategy, preserving more open, accessible spaces for labs. Click here to enlarge.

• Don’t expect lab bench spacing to be perfect. Locate the bench/table zone to achieve the longest run of space for flexibility, and avoid an idiosyncratic central core.

• Be opportunistic with office locations. Many renovated buildings have unusual corners, constrained grids, or smaller spaces in central cores that are best suited for offices, so don’t spend renovation dollars creating ideal offices within lab zones (Figure 4).

Conclusion

In conclusion, when selling a renovation idea to colleagues who may be skeptical, keep in mind the following points:
• Plan on spending money and time on swing space to achieve a single-phase project.
• Remember that the work spent on creating swing space has retained value beyond the project duration.
• Assume a 9- to 12-month time savings over new construction. Calculate both General Conditions savings and reduced escalation costs.
• Develop a realistic budget that includes contingencies for time as well as cost, and develop a schedule with specific milestones to avoid extended work.
• Calculate the value of work-in-place that will be retained.
• Be creative about matching your program to the unique qualities of your building.
• Use the renovation to repair damage caused by poor planning from the past. Open up new connections, and create stronger relationships between the building and the site.
• Don’t force the program where it doesn’t fit.
• Renovation is inherently more sustainable than new construction.

Mark Reed is a principal/VP and Erik Mollo-Christensen is a principal with Tsoi/Kobus & Associates, an architecture, planning and interior design firm located in Cambridge, Mass. (www.tka-architects.com).

This article first appeared in the October issue of Lab Design Newsletter.