Laboratory Building Refurbishment – Carbogen Amcis

Contract Value:- £1,600,000.00
Completed:- January 2020
Location:- Manchester

• • Complete Turnkey Laboratory Building Refurbishment
  • Fume Cupboards on VAV (Variable Air Volume) System
  • Fire suppression systems for Fume Cupboards
  • All Fixtures And Fittings
  • 3no. New HVAC Systems
  • All M&E Services
  • Gas Detection
  • Break Tank Installed
  • Laboratory Gas System Upgrade

iab was initially approached by Fumetec to meet with their client Carbogen to discuss a laboratory building refurbishment for just their existing second-floor lab. Over the next few months, we went back and forth with discussions over requirements and budgets until we were able to settle on a fixed budget that would give Carbogen everything they needed improving. During the project, Carbogen saw the improvements we were making to the areas and asked if we could include other areas of the building until we were improving areas on all floors.

We started with the ground floor labs which incorporated turning 1 open lab area into 4 separate labs. These were made up of 2no. instrument labs, designed for housing a large range of different instruments. Coordination of the bench depths and services required for each instrument was key for this area to work. The HVAC system for this area was its own dedicated unit to make sure we allowed plenty of temperature-controlled air into the lab to keep the instruments in the correct environment. A prep lab, which houses 3no. Fume Cupboards and a large ICP instrument. Finally, was a dedicated room for the NMR instrument. This room also needed to be a controlled environment for the instrument, so the HVAC was key to this room working correctly. For all 4 rooms, we reused some of the existing furniture but replaced the fronts to match the newly supplied furniture. For this area, we provide some windows with secondary glazing and blocked up others as required. To match the newly formed lab area, we replaced all of the doors on this floor. As well as decorating the corridor area to the new lab.

In the basement area, we created a temperature-controlled room that was to be set to 22c +/- 2c. For the standard items within this room we installed roller storage to maximise the amount of storage possible. Along with this, we installed 2no. ventilated chemical storage cabinets.

Once we had finished work on both the ground and basement floors, we moved up to the first floor. For this floor, we worked in two main areas. The first was to extend an existing lab that housed a single standard and a single walk-in fume cupboard. We upgrade these to have the VAV (Variable Air Volume) option and linked them to a new AHU (Air Handler Unit) we installed for all labs on this floor. We enlarged the room by converting the office area next door into a lab spec area. This was to house an extra 3no. standard fume cupboards with VAV (Variable Air Volume) and benching. This doubled the size of the existing lab. We also replaced the flooring, ceiling, LED lighting and partitions to match the labs on the other floors. On the first floor we converted 2no. existing offices into a new Kilo laboratory. This lab has 3no. large walk in fume cupboards, all with fire suppression systems as the work they do in here has a high chance of combustion while it is being worked on. There is very little benching in this lab, as the client needed the space for specialist kit.

After we had completed the first floor, we moved on to the second floor. This was currently made up a of 2no. labs, one at either end and a small write up area in the middle. As the client needed to keep working on this floor, we had to complete it in 2 halves. The aim on this floor was to create a large lab that ran the length of the floor with an adjacent office area with large windows looking into the lab. This lab is mainly made up of 17no. fume cupboards. 12 of which are existing and 5 of which are new fume cupboards. These fume cupboards are made of a wide selection from standard to walk in to large size custom made ones. Due to the large volume of air to be extracted by the fume cupboards, we installed VAV (Variable Air Volume) on all new and retro fitted this to the existing ones. This helped with the size of the new AHU we installed that was dedicated to this whole floor. Along with this we installed local AC for both the lab and office. As the fume cupboards took up one half the lab, we installed our standard cantilever laboratory benching with mobile drawers and cupboards to the rest of the lab.

As well as all the different services mentioned in the above laboratory building refurbishment, we also replaced the flooring, ceiling, installed new LED lighting and partitions so all labs matched, bringing consistency to the whole building. This helped to improve the image for the client. Meaning they can show new and existing client around the labs.