Forward Thinking

Brookhaven Builds for the Future

The Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island is home to over 3,000 scientists doing nuclear physics research on a mammoth 5,265-acre campus - so large, in fact, that the lab has its own zip code.

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Not surprisingly, simple maintenance of the lab requires a significant amount of effort - and a $900 million particle accelerator complex scheduled to start construction next year will bring in even more work.

In March, Brookhaven opened its new 94,500-sq-ft Center for Functional Nanomaterials, completed last April. E.W. Howell of Woodbury, N.Y., was the contractor on the $81 million project, which includes several high-tech specialty features and equipment for nanotech research, such as vibration-minimizing technology to protect microscopes capable of imaging at a billionth of a meter. CFN is also due to receive LEED certification from the U.S. Green Buildings Council.

Next year, Brookhaven will start construction on the $900 million National Synchrotron Light Source II that will replace the lab's existing light source. NSLS-II will house an accelerator capable of producing the world's largest and most sharply focused X-rays, for which crews will build a 2,500-ft circumference concrete tinnel. HDR Architects of Alexandria, Va. designed the 400,000-sq-ft complex, and a joint venture of LIRO/Gilbane of Woodbury, N.Y., and Providence, R.I., are managing preconstruction on the project, slated for substantial completion 2013, with the accelerator installation planned by 2015.

The lab is also in the design stage on a $66 million, 90,000-sq-ft facility to support alternative energy-related research, due to start construction in 2010. The facility is part of the lab's goal to diversify away from theoretical sciences and into real-worl applications, primarily in the area of renewable energy solutions such as catalysis, fuel cells, biofuels, and solar energy.

"Nanotech is not what your typical mom-and-pop shop does," says Lenny Bates, Brookhaven's assistant laboratory director for Facilities & Operations. "Most of the construction work tends to be more localized than the design work. When you design, you get some of the more national firms that tend to specialize in that kind of work and work with other labs for the Department of Energy."

Local firms are brought in regularly. EW Howell was the contractor on the $18 million, 65,000-sq-ft office Research Support Building completed in 2006. Ehasz, Giacalone Architects of Farmingdale and STV Engineers of New York were designed the facility, which received LEED Silver certification. Of the $18.7 million spent on engineering/construction in 2007, approximately 98 % wnet to local New York firms, with the rest going to New Jersey and Connecticut companies, according to Peter Genzer, a spokesman for the lab.

The lab bids out both construction and design work, although an in-house design task force exists as well.

"What has been involving is the nature of our R&D work, which has come to rely on the industry to come up with components," says Mike Bebon, the lab's deputy director for operations. Brookhaven's staff will often develop prototypes and bid out construction, with the lab's technicians working alongside the contractors. In addition, the lab has "moved away from the low-bid model to a procurement model to all for a more balanced model," in which a contractor's safety performance is taken into account.

"We get routinely told that we are the gold standard in construction safety," Bebon adds.