While office to lab conversions may seem to make good economic sense, compromises around productivity and flexibility can impact the life science business, tenant, or developer in ways that aren’t immediately obvious.
Globally, the sector is forecast to more than double by 2030, while in the UK investment has already increased 12x over the last decade.Laboratories play a key part in this transformation, supporting all stages of the life science value-chain: including R&D, quality control, diagnostic services, and teaching.
As a result, demand for labs is growing rapidly.In Cambridge and Oxford for example (two of the UK’s main life science hubs), demand for labs now outstrips available supply by nearly a hundred to one.Alongside this growth, improvements in IT, staffing challenges, and new ways of working, now mean that remote or flexible working is commonplace.
For life science developers and companies this has created a major opportunity: converting increasingly vacant or cheaper office space into labs – saving time and money.This may appear to be the perfect solution, however there are additional challenges to consider..
Conversion of an existing office tenancy into a new PCR and bloodwork lab.. 1.
Space.. Spatial constraints in office buildings can result in unproductive or inflexible lab layouts.. Office to lab conversions will often result in some compromises.Information handover at completion has traditionally been protracted, incomplete, and ‘file based’.
Information gathered through the project lifecycle is often focussed on that needed for construction, not necessarily that needed for operation..Platforms solution.
The digital record of data that sits behind the platform approach continues to add value throughout the operation of the asset and will facilitate increasingly data-driven use cases in the future including feedback loops and digital twins.. Data that feeds through to operation hand over and back into future design.The bedrock of data that threads all the way through the platforms process, can feed into the circular economy; building a core set of information that can be re-utilised, creating feedback loops that can then inform the design of future assets.