2008 Top Projects

Research Complex 2 project showcases collaborative design and construction processes

By Kelly Davidson

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Mortenson Construction of Denver is working through its punchlist while landscaping crews put the remaining touches on the grounds at Research Complex 2, the 506,000-sq-ft, $205.8-million biomedical research facility at the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora. The project broke ground in October 2005 and will be completed this month on time and within budget.

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The new 11-story tower, owned and operated by the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center, was designed to accommodate researchers from the School of Medicine and the School of Pharmacy.

The bottom two floors contain conference rooms, support services, mechanical/electrical space and common areas, while each of the upper nine floors has a mix of offices, wet/dry labs and procedural space. A two-story basement houses a 46,000-sq-ft vivarium and related support services.

Companion Piece RC2 is the second of the campus’ two research buildings. Research Complex 1 was completed by Greeley’s Hensel Phelps Construction Co. in June 2004. The 600,640-sq-ft, $216-million RC1 consists of a 12-story cancer research tower and a nine-story biomedical research tower adjoined by pedestrian bridges.

“There’s a greater emphasis on clinical needs in RC1, whereas there’s more emphasis on office space and flexible lab space in RC2,” says Curt Fentress of Fentress Architects of Denver, the architect-of-record. “That’s the key difference between the two facilities.”

The RC2 tower sits to the west of RC1 in the campus’ research quadrant. A 98-ft-long enclosed pedestrian bridge at the second floor connects the two facilities. In concert with an academic office building to the south, RC2 completes the western edge of the four-acre landscaped courtyard at the center of the quadrant.

Exterior materials and the scale of RC2 correspond with RC1. Along the east and west walls of the tower, a curtain wall and metal panel accent an expansive punch-window system that drenches the interior with natural light. The remaining portion of the exterior features hand-placed brick over metal studs backed with sheathing.

Lessons Learned For the design, Fentress Architects collaborated with KlingStubbins of Philadelphia, the project’s design architect and design engineer. The two firms, along with M-E Engineers, also worked together on RC1.

The team capitalized on RC1 as a resource, working with the owners and their management team from Denver’s Jacobs Carter Burgess to solicit feedback from RC1 users.

“Understanding all the lessons from the first building was key to the design of the second building,” says Jeff Heiken, an engineering design principal with KlingStubbins. “We had to understand not only what those lessons meant to us as architects and engineers, but also what they meant to the owners and users. The challenge was to roll all of that feedback into a effective design for RC2.”

The resulting design put greater emphasis on air ventilation, lab engineering, building operations/maintenance and energy conservation, Heiken says.

“Laboratories are notorious for energy use,” says Brian Kannady, a principal with M-E Engineers. “Energy-efficient design has come a long way in the few years since RC1. For RC2, it was a given that we would design energy-saving measures into the building.”

An evaporative cooling system was put in place to help reduce the reliance on mechanical refrigeration for air conditioning. A heat-recovery system captures the heat energy normally wasted in the building’s exhaust and reuses it to heat or cool the fresh air coming into the building. Both measures provide better climate control and less energy than traditional HVAC methods. A daylighting design uses both occupancy and daylight sensors to control energy-efficient fluorescent lights.

Creating Flexible Spaces A key goal of the design was to create flexible laboratory spaces. “Research hinges on grant dollars, and funding comes and goes,” says Mike Barden, manager of building projects for UCDHSC. “A flexible design allows us to easily modify the lab spaces to address changing research protocols.”

Consistent with RC1 laboratory design, RC2 laboratory and support spaces are designed with open floor plans that offer maximum flexibility, Fentress says. “We tried to organize the environment in a way that is user friendly and encourages interaction among the researchers working in both RC1 and RC2,” he adds.

Labs include movable cabinetry and casework. Mechanical and electrical systems were designed to be accessible and easily changeable. Ductwork, for example, was oversized to handle additional heating and cooling loads in the future. Adding to the flexibility on each floor, the north and south laboratory areas are programmed to operate either as labs or as offices.

Handled with Care Martin/Martin Inc. of Lakewood took the lead on the structural portion of the design. A standard steel frame and composite deck structure was erected above a caisson and cap foundation. “From the outside, the building looks like any other office building, but it’s really quite complex on the inside,” says Ralph Rempel, the project’s structural engineer of record and a principal at the firm. “No matter how trivial, every detail counts when dealing with exact laboratory specifications.”

Mortenson Construction took extra measures to keep the laboratory environment clean and free of contaminants. All of the pieces were prefabricated before arriving onsite, and crews adhered to special safety and sanity protocols set forth by the owners and user groups.

Laboratory projects are extremely detail-oriented and require substantial collaboration among the principles and subcontractors,” says Bob Hansen, Mortenson’s vice president and general manager.

Martin/Martin worked with Mortenson to ensure that the floors were especially level for the equipment and lab tables. In addition, the stiffness for the suspended flooring was precisely calculated to minimize the effect of occupant- and equipment-induced vibrations on sensitive equipment.

Finishing the 22.6-ft-deep basement was a collaborative effort between the design and construction teams. The design plan called for a vivarium with a 13-ft “walkable” ceiling. The 9-ft-high space above the walkable ceiling—essentially another floor—was designed to provide easy access to the vivarium’s mechanical and electrical systems.

“We worked closely with the vendors who provide the animal caging systems to develop and HVAC strategy that ensured a comfortable environment for the animals,” says Kannady with M-E Engineers, the electrical engineers on RC2.

Like most research facilities, RC2 is designed with electrical redundancy to protect sensitive research projects from the effects of power outrages, says Leonard Gurule, a senior associate at M-E Engineers.

Three double-ended, 4,000-amp switchboards feed the entire building, with two separate utility sources feeding into it. If power is lost from one source, the building can restore power by switching over to the second source.

In the event of complete power failure, two 1,250-kw generators will kick on to cover the critical loads, including code-required loads, emergency lighting, essential mechanical systems for labs and all of the systems for the vivarium.

Redundant feeders from the generator distribution board to the standby distribution system mean that the building is not limited to a single point of failure and can be easily switched over to an alternate breaker when necessary.

Going Virtual From start to finish, the construction for RC2 was notably smooth thanks to lessons learned from RC1 and the use of virtual design and construction techniques to plan, coordinate, fabricate, and construct the building, Hansen says.

“While the use of virtual design and construction processes are fairly common today, and that wasn’t necessarily the case when we started the project a few years ago,” Hansen says. “It’s quite remarkable how the entire team embraced the technology and how it saved us all time, money, and aggravation over the course of the project.”

Using integrated work planning for concrete placement, 4D visualization, and 3D building and systems coordination, Mortenson was able to minimize change orders and streamline the workflow by addressing problems during preconstruction.

The design team also used BIM to enhance the design process by sharing all of the models as part of the process. Mortenson then built production models to facilitate construction.

As a result of this collaboration, the project finished on time and four months faster than RC1.

Occupancy of the new building will mark the end of an era for the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center. The building provides long-awaited facilities for the UCDHSC to move all remaining operations to the new campus, and after at least seven years in transition, vacate its former location at Ninth Avenue and Colorado Boulevard.

Full occupancy is expected by December.

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