Lab Stakeholders’ Role in Creating a Sustainable Facility

Laboratory facilities are notorious energy hogs. Therefore, lab design/build teams are tasked with building new labs—or renovating existing labs—to be as energy efficient as possible. Features such as low-flow water fixtures, flexible equipment, and thoughtfully placed windows to let in maximum sunlight are used by project teams to keep a building’s carbon footprint as low as possible.

Sustainability is a personal goal for many who are involved in the lab. Frost & Sullivan recently surveyed 500 lab managers from around the world on behalf of Agilent Technologies to ask about their attitudes and goals concerning sustainability. When asked about the top reasons for being positive or enthusiastic about sustainability, 67 percent of those surveyed stated that they are undergoing sustainable practices to improve the efficiency of a lab or lab facility. The report also cites that 65 percent of those surveyed want a more sustainable lab to ensure safety from a health, nature, and environmental perspective.

Communication and involvement are key

Obtaining main stakeholder participation is critical to reducing a lab’s carbon footprint. Agilent’s research shows that, in 49 percent of labs, internal organizational team effort plays a leading role in helping a lab/organization succeed. This includes organizational guidelines and protocols, campaigns, and initiatives. Laboratory directors and managers are majorly responsible, followed by the director/head of sustainability and R&D.

Early and frequent communication with key project stakeholders is an important part of the design/build process. “Understanding expectations and developing a process to continuously review the project design and associated construction costs is critical to successfully communicating with project stakeholders,” says Brandon Fortier, Director of Science & Technology, IMEG. “With ever-changing market conditions, timely and routine communication is the only way to ensure a project is designed on time and on budget.”

Lab planners can work with laboratory equipment, casework, and furniture vendors to select the best possible. This work starts at the bidding stage of a new lab project or a renovation when interviews are scheduled with potential suppliers to determine who will join their project team. Agilent’s report shows that 61 percent of labs perceive information shared by vendors related to their own company goals and objectives towards sustainability, and instrument- and product-related information to be helpful or influential.

“Start the communication early in the process. Sustainable targets and strategies should be considered and even analyzed before a concept design is produced,” says Colin Rohlfing, sustainable development director at HDR. “Encourage these key individuals to be present and actively designing from day one.”

Installing new systems is one strategy for labs to reduce carbon emissions, but in some cases working with what the lab already has is the most effective solution. “The best design strategies are those that don’t inherently cost money to accomplish. Accurately understanding the building’s needs, not overdesigning the systems, and appropriately identifying the true user needs are always the most important first steps for reducing carbon,” says Fortier. “After that, strategies like energy recovery and reset controls on ventilation systems offer immediate paybacks due to the ventilation demands of a typical laboratory environment. With the need to electrify in the push for decarbonization, reducing peak system heating and cooling loads is critical to implementing an HVAC system that isn’t cost-prohibitive.”

Analyze your systems and instruments

Labs striving to be sustainable need to use less energy, but with so many instruments and utilities in the labs, that can be a hard task. Engineering, architecture, environmental, and construction services firm HDR suggests starting with looking at the lab’s air change rates. Using a cascading air-flow paradigm, 100 percent outside air is delivered according to risk-based zoning, with lower-risk air “recycled” to higher-risk zones, resulting in substantial energy savings. Labs should also focus on the reduction of peak solar load for high-intensity spaces to allow for this reduction in ACH and specification of low-energy comfort delivery systems.

Analytical instruments play a key role in the design and construction of a sustainable lab. Agilent cites that 85 percent of labs surveyed look to vendors of analytical instruments to support the reduction of emissions. Lab planners, architects, engineers, and others in the design/build field can collaborate with these vendors to create a space that can accommodate these instruments and systems.

Reduce water consumption

Research by Frost & Sullivan on behalf of Agilent shows that 68 percent of labs are reducing their environmental footprint by reducing/optimizing water and energy consumption. Water systems are a main concern when dealing with the sustainable lab. A Lab Design article written by Jim Batchelor, Kate Bubriski, Tavis Frankel of Arrowstreet, and Bob Andrews of AHA Consulting Engineers, Inc. cites the most substantial water use in a lab—cleaning. This includes the autoclave, sterilizer, glass wash, and cage wash. Pure water filtration is also included in a lab’s water usage, as well as lab waste pH adjustment. One strategy to use less water in a lab is to utilize disposable containers and cages, but this presents a new challenge in regard to increased waste. A more sustainable option, they say, is to eliminate the use of water faucet venturi vacuum connections to reduce excessive water use. Autoclave and glass/cage washer manufacturers are using similar techniques to residential dishwashers in order to reduce the amount of water used per cycle, although the process will never use zero water. 

Large reverse osmosis systems still reject three-quarters of a gallon of water to make one gallon of pure water. To combat this, many municipalities now require labs to capture rejected water and reuse it on-site to flush toilets, refill cooling towers, or provide irrigation services. Another option is to contain chemical waste off-site and have it removed by a disposal contractor. Even less goes down the drain, which will offer additional water savings.

Take up less space

Another strategy is to design with less space. HDR recommends re-assessing the 11-foot lab module standard because in many cases the same research can take place within a 10-foot grid. This results in linear efficiencies in plan and cubic efficiencies in volume and materials.

Vendors who demonstrate a serious commitment to sustainability can provide consulting services to assess/improve lab efficiency and can recommend instruments and systems that support the tracking and monitoring of key metrics related to sustainability. They can suggest compact instruments which use less bench space, for example. “Incorporating computational research and shared collaboration spaces within laboratories reuses areas previous used for equipment. This approach promotes teamwork, communication, and innovation among researchers and scientists while alleviating expansion and/or new build,” says Tom Smith, education & science design director at HDR. “With the onset of additional benchtop equipment, it is important to track and monitor plug loads, and to take steps at reducing plug load energy consumption by a combination of technological solutions, behavioral changes, and organizational support.”

To find like-minded project collaborators, Tom Knittel, sustainability design director at HDR, suggests looking at design/build firms who are actively involved in I2SL (International Institute for Sustainable Laboratories) or Sustainable Labs Canada. “Look for industry leaders, what firms are respected in the field and asked to speak at industry conferences,” he says, remarking that labs interested in finding compatible firms to work with can search sustainable lab conference websites to find subject matter aligning with their goals.

MaryBeth DiDonna is the managing editor of Lab Design. She can be reached at mdidonna@labdesignconference.com.