Program

Notch Therapeutics is a cell therapy company developing renewable, stem cell-derived immunotherapies, with an initial focus on treating cancer. Notch’s proprietary platform is capable of efficient and scalable in vitro generation of T lineage cells from multiple stem cell sources, which represents a novel, modifiable cell source for allogeneic, next-generation T-cell therapeutics. After being established in 2018, Notch has raised over $100M USD from Canadian, US and international venture capital groups and currently employs ~70 people across three sites in Toronto, Vancouver and Seattle. Notch’s early success has relied on a changing reality of biotech in Canada: one with a renewed emphasis on building companies of scale, achieved through attracting international financing, accessing world-class infrastructure, and recruiting/retaining talent. This talk will discuss the changing nature of the Canadian Biotech sector towards resiliency, highlight some of the challenges of establishing and scaling a new company in Canada, and provide examples of how Notch has navigated some of these challenges.

The University of British Columbia’s (UBC) Green Labs Program empowers researchers to minimize the significant environmental impact of laboratory-based activities by implementing sustainable practices and technologies. A key priority area of the program is to engage staff and the research community around climate action and foster a culture of sustainability, relying on a network of sustainability champions throughout our labs. The pandemic has required significant adaptations over the past year and a half, for UBC’s lab community and for Green Labs programming. One resulting initiative, in development from the Sustainability Engagement team, Green Labs and sustainability champions, is the Sustainable Campus Engagement Program. The program is a unit-based sustainability engagement and climate action scheme that will offer lab units, as well as offices, pathways to prioritize and implement actions to support UBC’s sustainability and climate goals.

The program is designed as a self-auditing scheme with clear expectations and regular recertification requirements. The 4 tiers of progression allow for celebration and recognition of participants’ accomplishments and encourage continued action. Ultimately, the program is intended to build capacity across the university, foster distributed action, support top-down and bottom-up systems change, integrate climate justice, and build resilience.

Green Labs programming will continue to support lab users to both participate in climate action and the Sustainable Campus Engagement Program and to implement wise laboratory practices that support their success in an evolving landscape and ensure their labs are resilient & sustainable.

Dalhousie is a member of the U15 group of Canada’s most research-intensive universities. Over the last decade, a number of initiatives have been implemented to reduce energy, water and greenhouse gases, clarify and develop safety protocols, and renew facilities. Initiatives include green building strategies in new construction, recommissioning, solid and universal waste management standards and delivery, detailed lab and building audits, deep retrofits, and more. The team will highlight successes and lesson learned from implementation including strategies such as detailed design guidelines and controls sequencing, and financing. We will highlight key initiatives for the next decade including the launch of a new green labs program and a project to use enhanced fault detection to spot problems.

Adaptability of the laboratory at two different scales. The macro – the lab facility itself, and the micro – the individual lab modules.

The Macro – The case study project (National Research Council (NRC) – Canadian Centre for Advanced Material Manufacturing) required the facility to be expandable in the future to accommodate the user groups scheduled growth over the next 5-10 years. This expandability was reviewed in both the horizontal and vertical directions, each presenting different opportunities and challenges. During the discussion, we will review why the vertical direction was selected for this specific project, what infrastructure was put in place to facilitate this future expansion, and some lessons learned as the future expansion was implemented far earlier than originally anticipated and before the first phase of construction was complete.

The Micro – The case study project (NRC – Canadian Centre for Advanced Material Manufacturing) required flexibility and modularity of the lab spaces far beyond what is typically requested in this area of the work. The user group deals with not only their own research and development, but often partners up with different commercial clients that can require security around any proprietary information. This requirement plus the ability to remove all lab benches and casework from the lab area while maintaining access to mechanical and electrical lab services provided for a unique and custom solution. During the discussion, we will review the implemented casework system that allowed for quickly dividing the main lab space into multiple individual lab modules, how a ceiling supported service column system allowed for maintaining services to the labs when the casework was removed, and individual lab module control of abundant natural daylighting.

The above-mentioned case study project provided a unique opportunity in terms of adaptability and its design requirements. Not only did the project have adaptability requirements, but the design solutions for the requirements were put into practice before the first phase of the project was even complete. This has in turn, provided us with the opportunity to discuss not only the implemented strategies, but how these worked out and any subsequent lessons learned.

Laboratories Canada is a 25-year strategy that will deliver on its vision to strengthen federal science in Canada. Budget 2018 launched the first phase of this strategy with an investment of $2.8 billion to support federal scientists in the important work they do for Canada.

The first construction project delivered by Laboratories Canada is the expansion of the existing Canadian Centre for Advanced Material Manufacturing (CCAMM) in Mississauga. This project has targeted Net Zero Carbon and Net Zero Energy Ready in keeping with Laboratories Canada guiding principles.

Collaboration and infrastructure flexibility are key objectives of this project, enabling both physical and virtual collaboration, while supporting the delivery of multiple concurrent science programs. The guiding principles for all Laboratories Canada facilities are:

• Science excellence;
• Collaboration;
• A diverse and inclusive talent pool;
• Agility and responsiveness;
• Environmental responsibility; and,
• Responsible public stewardship.

This presentation will outline the specific challenges and integrated solutions developed for the CCAMM expansion, which involves the vertical expansion of an existing two storey facility for National Research Council and Natural Resources Canada.

The pandemic taught us what many people have only talked about for many years: remote work is possible, reasonable, productive and can provide a great work-life balance without negatively impacting productivity. This has a huge impact on how we manage and plan space going forward. While spaces are essential for team building and networking, how we use our existing support spaces to labs will look quite different in the labs of the future. Gone is the notion that you must sit adjacent to your lab to manage your planning and analysis work. We can’t eliminate the lab support spaces but they may certainly look different as we plan ahead. UHN has developed tools to help assess the appropriateness of remote work and subsequently tools to evaluate the impact to space. In many areas we are seeing a 30-40% reduction in workspaces, particularly for teams that have a supportive role to research. This presentation will demonstrate these tools and show you can effectively reduce space but still provide the key areas needed for interaction. The key message being that reducing space reduces the operational demand, reduces capital costs leading to reduced impact to the environment. All ‘sustainable goals’.

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic research lab activity was brought to a halt along with other industries. Due to the importance to continue essential research into both COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 related projects it was imperative to be able to get labs up and running again quickly in a safe and efficient manner. As such a great deal of work was put forward in a short period of time to set up new processes, procedures and infrastructure related to building facilities and soft services focused on the safe delivery of daily operations. From providing optimal air quality, tracking staff access, screening, PPE distribution, increased housekeeping and delivery of lab supplies, all aspects of building operations and lab services were reviewed and optimized during the pandemic. This often required innovative thinking and on the fly changes in order to adapt to the ever changing information regarding the transmission of the virus.

By implementing these initiatives, UHN was able to get labs up and running within two months of the initial shutdown and provide a sustainable safe environment without a single documented case of on-site virus transmission within our research spaces. The presentation will focus on the planning and execution of these initiatives and the lessons learned along the way. While some measures were abandoned at various stages, others were recognized to be improvements over existing processes and as such incorporated into standard practice going forward. Additionally, these newfound insights will be used to inform decisions regarding lab design and operations for both existing and future new builds.

Originally built in 1965, the Shrum Science Chemistry Building, 9,706 m², at the Burnaby campus was renovated in 2010 earning Simon Fraser University (SFU) its first LEED Gold certification, but that was just the first step of the deep energy retrofit of the building. Since then, a number of energy conservation strategies were implemented and that included the innovative strobic fan optimization through wind sensing and modelling while maintaining a safe working environment within the labs. Alongside this optimization, an extensive LED lighting upgrade was completed to yield additional savings while improving the environment for students and researchers. Through the collaboration with BC Hydro, SFU has recently demonstrated a demand response program to prepare for further load shedding strategy. In 2021, a pilot was further undertaken with Environmental Health and Safety department to upgrade three fumehoods to full VAV, thus improving the safety with enhanced features and reducing a significant amount of energy consumption. Currently, SFU is in the process of upgrading fifty fumehoods. These strategies have yielded about 1 GWh of electricity savings and would not have successful without the support of the engaged lab occupants.

The presentation will describe the process involved to upgrade an existing operating laboratory with minimal or no down time within the lab and showcase the technology and energy savings of such an upgrade.

Information to come.

The inclusion of Building Enclosure Commissioning (BECx) as a prerequisite in Fundamental Commissioning and in the Enhanced Commissioning credit of LEEDv4 prompted significant discussion regarding the delivery of high-performance enclosures. With pressure for proven energy efficiency measured after occupancy rather than based on predictions, the design and construction of enclosures faces increasingly stringent demands. Compounding the challenge, building technology continues to evolve with new products and building systems that have become more interdependent; a failure of one system can lead to deficiencies in another.

Using case studies for commissioned laboratory and medical facilities, this presentation will demonstrate when and how technical reviews should be performed and how this information is fed back into the OPR and the BOD to reflect changes as the design progresses. It will also provide an overall understanding of how specialized digital modelling is used to increase the accuracy of predictive energy models using component thermal studies, hygrothermal studies predicting wetting/drying cycles, daylighting/shading studies balancing solar gain with natural lighting, and air movement studies. During construction, BECx activities include shop drawing review, coordination meetings, inspections, the various types of verification testing and how these are applied to specific projects.

The recent Pandemic has reinforced the need for laboratory owners and design engineers to ensure laboratories remain flexible and can quickly and easily adapt to changing conditions. Providing dynamically controlled air change rates in labs based on current requirements and real-time conditions are one of the keys to maintain a flexible and adaptive lab environment. This ensures the labs are providing a safe environment while also remaining energy efficient.

This strategy includes providing real-time air quality monitoring of the lab, so the lab adapts to current air change and air quality requirements their owners believe are required in their lab buildings. The technology that implements this strategy has been implemented in over 350 lab buildings across Canada and the United States.

An overview of this technology will be explained and examples and data from existing projects will be reviewed showing how the lab environment can adapt to changing conditions.

The pandemic has shown the world how critical the life sciences and biotech industries are to health and safety, and has also opened up significant funding towards growing Canadian companies and the sector as a whole. The pandemic, and this significant growth, has also proven how little appropriate leasable space there is available in most major S&T cities around the world.

With businesses implementing full or partial work-from-home policy both during and post-pandemic, the vacancy rate of office buildings in urban centers has increased sharply. This has opened up possibilities and presents opportunities for the S&T sector to grow into. But it comes with challenges.

Office-to-lab renovations present different challenges compared to standard lab renovation, and it also offers a win-win for developers and those biotech firms looking for suitable space without having to build from the ground up. The idea of converting office space offers significant resilience to the S&T market as a whole within an urban center looking to attract and keep growing companies local. This plays to the idea of the resilience of the S&T sector itself, within the Canadian market, but expands to the global S&T market as well based on the significant growth being seen.

The presentation will share the challenges and lessons learned from a number of office-to-lab renovation projects and feasibility studies. The wants and needs of both the landlords and lab tenants will be examined. Design strategies, risk assessments, and trade-offs from concept design to construction will also be discussed.

Over the past year and a half in the midst of COVID, there has been a shift in urban environments with a decline in the need for office space and an increase in need for lab space especially for life sciences. Many buildings destined for “life at the office” are being converted to lab spaces in the hopes of attracting future, long-term tenants. Many of these buildings are located in mixed-use, urban areas and require significant changes to mechanical systems to accommodate lab ventilation requirements.

Designers need to provide flexibility in the core design to accommodate various types of lab tenants, while also considering possible future tenant needs. A key challenge to the design process includes locating lab exhausts and AHU equipment within the physical constraints of the building, while maintaining safe air quality in the lab. Re-entrainment of exhaust contaminants can affect air quality within the building and at neighbouring mixed-use buildings. This can compromise the safety and comfort of occupants and experiments, and the neighbours.

Prudent planning during early design stages using typical parameters can help to properly locate core building and future tenant exhausts and HVAC equipment. However, detailed evaluation is often necessary to confirm exhaust dispersion performance. This presentation will outline design planning strategies using specific examples that can be used early in the design process to reduce air quality impacts of the new lab exhausts on the renovated building and its neighbors. It will also provide an overview of best practices for developing emissions estimates in the absence of known chemical use and evaluating exhaust and intake design.

Our world is changing. Rising temperatures have a ripple effect on our climate, leading to effects both predictable and unexpected. Heat waves and sea level rise are harbingers of change. Fiercer storms, wildfire, river flooding, heavier snow, and agricultural change are not far behind. Our future cities, buildings, businesses, and overall lives may look quite different from those of our parents. Laboratories aren’t immune to these changes. In some ways, they are even more sensitive than other environments.

Resilience planning and design are key tools to help us understand, mitigate, and adapt our lives to the changing world. There are a host of codes, standards, guides, and references available for disaster mitigation, facility hardening, and resilience planning. Until now, however, few have focused on the unique challenges of the laboratory. The International Institute for Sustainable Laboratories’ Best Practices Guide: Laboratory Resilience explores how resilience applies to laboratories and presents practical applications in real-world facilities.

In this keynote, the authors of the lab resilience guide will discuss how we can work together to transform laboratory design and operations toward a resilient future. They will provide the background and history of the Guide, how it came to be and how it evolved through the pandemic. They will recount the collaborative efforts of the working group, case study contributors and peer reviewers that influenced the Guide. Finally, they will present their thoughts on next steps, ending with a call to action: how you can help get the word out, add your case studies and get involved in future research.

As institutions look at ways to encourage people back into labs, learn how leading frameworks that are associated with health and wellness and healthy buildings address returning back to work safely. When addressing healthy buildings, it is important to understand the components and features that are considered essential with their design, construction and operations. Many of these frameworks are performance-based systems and address labs slightly differently, but what they often have in common is ventilation and best practices associated with testing key components within your space. There are many opportunities for laboratory spaces to begin to address and implement these strategies or frameworks within their own spaces. This introductory session to healthy buildings will address WELL, Fitwel and ArcSkoru Health & Safety rating systems and their benefits and differences so that audience can make future informed decisions.

As we learn more about how COVID-19 is transmitted, we look back on past global threats like SARS and H1N1 and consider a future where another health threat is likely. We can no longer treat mechanical ventilation systems as an afterthought. Occupants and researchers in a lab need assurance that the air they breathe is healthy and clean. As a result, the casual implementation of standard ventilation systems in labs may no longer be acceptable, and thoughtful ventilation design become a key part of keeping people safe in shared labs. The type of ventilation system in labs plays an important role in preventing the transmission of COVID-19 and other pathogens that are transmitted through respiratory droplets. This presentation will give the audience a better understanding of ventilation strategies to help reduce the risk of pathogen transmission in labs.

Canada has lost most of the entire Village of Lytton, British Columbia to climate change and governments across Canada have declared a climate emergency. Laboratories are of course one of the largest users of energy and largest sources of direct and indirect emissions of all building typologies. Laboratories are also the incubator of knowledge and ground-breaking research that will help solve our carbon challenges, and thus we can forgive them for some of their energy consumption but decarbonizing our laboratories must still happen. Carbon pricing, which removes the externalization of carbon emissions, will, in the next 10-20 years, make decarbonizing laboratories necessary to control increasing operating costs.

The presenters will discuss two projects. First, a feasibility study to decarbonize an existing laboratory connected to a campus energy plan. The facility was “moved” virtually to multiple locations across Canada and the impact on carbon and operating costs was investigated within the context of the locale. The results will be presented in the context of the projected future electrical grid carbon emissions, as well as the impact on operating costs with the projected escalating price on carbon emission.

The second project is a from the ground up new building. Sustainability and carbon emissions are being considered at the same time as the program is being developed. If the low operating carbon emissions of the project are realized, then the Life Cycle Assessment the materials used to construct the building constitute the majority of its carbon emissions over the next 30-40 years. The design team will discuss the journey of managing the program with the stakeholders, to not only manage the project budget, but also embodied carbon emissions.

This work will be extrapolated to consider the case of changes in the central energy plant that laboratories must consider, as universities and governments in Canada respond to the imperative of achieving zero carbon. Because many laboratories are located at campuses with central energy plants, they will need to become a partner in the transition to lower temperature heating technology.

McMaster Innovation Park (MIP) has grown steadily since its inception, and now stands at the beginning of a major scale up, with the goals of a future footprint of 2.5 million square feet. MIP will be a hub of life sciences research and entrepreneurship extending out from Hamilton, Ontario and encompassing the Greater Toronto Area and surrounding region.

The first stage of this expansion begins with the former Hamilton Spectator newspaper building at 44 Frid Street. This iconic three-storey 260,000 square foot building will be renovated and become home to life science laboratories, supporting offices, and collaborating and amenity spaces. This redevelopment will be a deep green retrofit with the goal of creating a Net Zero Carbon life sciences laboratory. The project will seek to achieve Net Zero Carbon in lieu of Net Zero Energy due to the high energy demands of the lab spaces. Given the relatively clean Ontario energy grid, the project will seek to offset the operational carbon emissions produced by the project.

The project is following an Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) approach, a collaborative project development process that integrates people, systems, business structures, and business practices. The IPD process collectively harnesses the talents and insights of all project participants to optimize the project results; increase value to the owner; reduce waste; and, maximize efficiency throughout all the phases of design, fabrication, and construction. IPD unlocks very early-stage deep collaboration to focus on achieving project goals effectively. Building systems are designed concurrently with lab program and space planning so that the design team is able to tune their individual designs to compliment partner disciplines and maximize value to the building owners and occupants.

The 44 Frid conversion provides the project team with an excellent opportunity to demonstrate the value of reusing existing infrastructure. Carefully considered interventions to bring modern design elements into the existing structure and façade support multiple aspects of building resiliency.

First, the embodied carbon equivalent of the existing robust structure is preserved reducing the first impact of construction and reducing risks of supply chain uncertainty. Next, space planning concurrent and in partnership with preliminary mechanical systems schematic design ensures that indoor air quality, resilient and efficient mechanical systems, and low energy operation is woven into all aspects of the building program. And finally, implementing design concepts of flexibility and modularity to support easier and streamlined future science tenant fit outs reduces the long-term environmental impacts and disruptions of the ongoing interior changes that define the lifecycle of buildings.

Our long-term environmental and societal challenges are best met by adopting and adapting improved habits and behaviours. Through the carefully planned reuse and reinvigoration of aged but robust infrastructure, the 44 Frid conversion will demonstrate that iconic buildings need not be replaced to make way for new. New can be built within existing infrastructure to improve our climate resiliency and to provide continuity for the landmarks that define communities.

The recently completed Science and Engineering Complex is the most ambitious project ever undertaken by Harvard University. The 550,000 sf facility houses the School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) along with other research programs, and is designed to be the premier facility of its type in the world. The building combines wet research labs, teaching labs, dry labs, classrooms/lecture halls, a dining/kitchen facility, vivarium and various support spaces, all built around a massive eight story atrium.

The project employed a highly integrated design process to satisfy the aggressive project goals developed by Harvard and the Design Team. Among these goals were achieving the highest possible level of energy efficiency while providing a healthy environment for occupants and a high level of resiliency. This presentation will highlight the design process undertaken and the resulting architectural and mechanical/ electrical design strategies used to satisfy these goals. Strategies to be discussed include envelope and shading screen optimization, occupant comfort analysis, laboratory ventilation optimization, radiant heating and cooling systems, natural/mechanically induced ventilation, and high efficiency heat recovery with indirect evaporative cooling. Resiliency/flood mitigation measures and the elaborate water recycling/re-use system will be reviewed as well. The project achieved LEED Platinum certification, with a projected EUI of 86 and also received LBC Petal certification for Materials, Beauty and Equity.

The Complexe des sciences de l’Université de Montréal, the cornerstone of the new MIL campus, was inaugurated on September 20, 2019. A flagship project for Montreal, this unique facility dedicated to teaching and research in scientific fields is proving to be the starting point for the revitalization of an entire sector, located in the middle of the island of Montreal.

Initiated 15 years ago by the Université de Montréal, designed and built over the past five years, including a three-year construction period, the Science Complex was the largest university construction site in Canada, and the fourth largest in Quebec after the CHUM, the Samuel-De Champlain Bridge and the Turcot Interchange.

With a floor area of 60,000 m² and aiming for LEED NC Gold certification, the Science Complex is home to the students, professors and employees of the chemistry, physics, geography and biological sciences departments of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. In all, some 2,400 people currently use the Complex.

Representing a total investment of $350 million, the project has met several technical challenges, but above all, the new Science Complex of the Université de Montréal is a true social project, an extraordinary opportunity to create places that promote interconnection and innovation, while forging links within the university community as well as with the citizens of the surrounding neighbourhoods.

Combining the requirements of scientific endeavours (10 teaching laboratories, 190 research laboratories, 350 chemical hoods, clean rooms, etc.) with the environmental requirements of a LEED certification required know-how, ingenuity and innovation from each stakeholder. Indeed, the scientific vocation required that the sensitivity of certain laboratory instruments to physical and sound vibrations and their impact on mechanical equipment, particularly ventilation, be considered from the very first stages of design.

From its conception, the project faced many issues: regulatory and urban insertion issues, various technical issues regarding structural strategies, risk management related to flammable liquids, acoustics and energy saving.

Catherine Bélanger and Dany Gaucher will discuss some of these issues as well as the key elements that contributed to the success of the project.