Guidelines for Laboratory Design: Health and Safety Considerations
“The program will definitely benefit me and my organization in various lab renovations we are doing and in building our new institute which we are processing right now. The program far exceeded my expectations.”
—Samaila Shawulu, Architecture, Design and Construction, Institute of Human Virology Nigeria
Upcoming Program Information
View detailed information for the upcoming program
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Guidelines for Laboratory Design: Health and Safety Considerations
This applied program explores the needs of diverse stakeholders to ensure laboratories are safe, free of hazards, ergonomically sound, and environmentally friendly. Guided laboratory tours ensure you leave the course able to apply what you learned to your organization’s facilities and projects.
Program Fees
- Standard Price $3,200.00
Program Overview
The design and construction of a laboratory, regardless of its use, involves many stakeholders. While providing a safe environment for laboratory users to perform their work is imperative, competing stakeholders’ needs often cause health and safety considerations to be overlooked.
Participating in Guidelines for Laboratory Design: Health and Safety Considerations will help you address this issue by providing you with an understanding of how lab design options impact the health and safety of laboratory users and the environment. With this knowledge, you will be able to incorporate the needs of all stakeholders and ensure your labs are safe, free of health hazards, and promote a healthier environment.
Participants in this program will explore and address health and safety considerations for diverse laboratory types and gain the skills they need to create a safe laboratory environment. This program covers general laboratory design challenges, as well as issues specific to chemistry, microelectronics clean room, engineering, animal, biosafety, clinical, and sustainable laboratories. Participants also address issues with new laboratory construction, renovation, and decommissioning.
This course provides a unique opportunity for architects, EHS professionals, engineers, lab users, and lab managers to collaborate on laboratory design.
Guided Laboratory Tours
The online version of this program will feature three laboratories. You will participate in a virtual tour of Harvard’s newly completed Science and Engineering Complex and hear directly from the building’s designers and EHS professionals. You will also learn about Boston Children’s Hospital’s Clinical Laboratory and the MIT.nano building.
The on-campus version of this program features guided tours of chemistry, clean room, nanotechnology, clinical, biosafety, and animal research laboratories at leading academic and medical institutions in the Boston area. These tours help reinforce concepts taught during the course and ensure you leave able to apply what you learned to your organization’s facilities and projects.
- Clinical laboratories at Brigham and Women’s Hospital
- Open labs at the MIT Koch Institute
- Animal labs at the MIT Koch Institute
- Clean rooms at Harvard University
- Chemistry research laboratory renovations at Harvard University
Objectives and Highlights
Learn practical and cost-effective solutions to renovation and reconstruction issues including:
- Green design and construction
- Decontamination of an existing facility
- Special health and safety precautions in partially occupied buildings undergoing renovation
- Adding energy conservation features
- Case studies of successful reconstructions and details of decisions not to reconstruct will also be presented
- Laboratory ventilation including fume hoods and other exhaust requirements
- Safety design features include fire protection, electrical systems, emergency equipment and controls, and chemical storage
- valuate laboratory design options related to health, safety, and environmental considerations using risk assessment and cost-effectiveness parameters
- Apply appropriate design information for laboratory types used in industry, academia, and hospitals
- Demonstrate familiarity with mechanical systems vital to state-of-the-art laboratory functions
- Understand the primary principles of safety, health, and environmental responsibilities and the impact of these considerations on the planning and sustainable design of laboratory facilities
- Learn details of laboratory systems and planning strategies to reduce risks to occupants of laboratory facilities
- Learn to plan laboratories so that chemical fume hoods and other potentially hazardous processes and equipment perform safely
- Decommission, decontaminate, renovate, and reconstruct old laboratories
- Apply laboratory design information regarding heat loads from research equipment, ventilation requirements, optimum air flows, and contamination control through air pressure regulation
- Identify recent developments in the design of HVAC systems for laboratories, including variable air volume (VAV) systems, high-performance hoods, air exchange rates, ductless hoods, recirculation of air, and the application of energy conservation measures
- Become familiar with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis to improve the performance of chemical fume hoods
- Incorporate into practice important information about the design of hazardous waste-handling facilities, safety shower and eyewash stations, and research support facilities
- Complete structures that are safe and free of health hazards by consulting ( instead of consulting maybe use “ partner” or collaborate” ) with architects, contractors, owners, and users during program scope definition, design, and construction.
- Identify design features that provide solutions for the unique health and safety hazards associated with laboratories used for different functions
- Please become familiar with CFD and how it is used in laboratory design
- Provide detailed specifications regarding laboratory support facilities for hazardous waste storage, packaging, and shipping
- Identify the unique needs of specific types of laboratories such as biosafety, chemistry, microelectronics, animal facilities, and engineering
- Understand the perspectives and constraints of architects and engineers, and the need to communicate with them from the earliest stages of the project through the completion