US Department of Health
NIAID, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
Project Description
Completed in 2008, the 144,000 gsf NIH/NIAID intramural high containment biodefense facility was the first (A) BSL-2/3/4 building to be constructed at the new National Interagency Biodefense Campus at Fort Detrick. The key challenge for this project was to provide the first fully integrated advanced medical equipment, patient support infrastructure, and whole animal imaging core in an ABSL-3/4 vivarium environment, in a biocontainment facility model while mitigating conflicts between the stringent biosafety requirements of containment barrier design and the finely calibrated scientific equipment. MCW Hemisphere provided commissioning services for the high containment portion of this project as well as overall management of engineering services, and full mechanical, plumbing, controls, and fire protection design and coordination. Specialized systems design included liquid waste decontamination system and waste monitoring, tissue digester, and a study of the existing campus medical waste incinerators. This was the first BSL-4 facility designed to contain imaging technologies (MRI) within containment space.