But they don’t have to be.
Meeting with those users to understand the processes being undertaken is fundamental to delivering a successful laboratory design project.However, this can lead to budget issues; the laboratory designer must evaluate the costs of the users’ requests against the functionality of the lab to determine the scope.
Some clients will have a very clear scope, especially if the lab is an expansion or extension of an existing process, but some clients will need help in creating the scope, especially for new processes.It should also be noted that users often have a fixed solution in mind based on what they have done in the past - their solution may not be the best for the laboratory design project, and it is our job to challenge their assumptions and offer alternative, perhaps better, solutions..Lab processes can be grouped into distinct functional spaces, for example: dry processes, milling, synthesis or analytics.
These functional spaces are theoretical zones which have no spatial definition, acting as a visual way of defining a group of processes which are related to one another..Working with users to categorise the laboratory processes into these distinct functional spaces enables us to generate flow diagrams for the process..
Lab design layout: identifying the flows.
As with any project, many stakeholders see a lab design layout as the primary early deliverable to determine that progress is being made on the project.At the end of its life, the various standardised components would be recycled, reused or redeployed, creating a circular economy.
As the Internet of Things evolves and built assets become smarter, gathering increasing amounts of data, they could become self-optimising, intelligent buildings – recognising the need for a change in air or lighting levels.Ultimately, this type of data would then feed back into the design process itself, creating an open-ended process of continual improvement, and contributing to the next generation of components.. Our sustainable future.
Of course, the most pressing, current question is: how do we make a planet which sustainably supports 11.5 billion people?Population growth coupled with the required infrastructure will generate massive amounts of carbon.