POST-COVID-19 | LABS IN OFFICES HOW HOARE LEA TURNED AN OFFICE INTO THE MOLECULAR SCIENCES RESEARCH HUB The Molecular Sciences Research Hub was fundamental to the creation of Imperial Colleges White City Campus. It was developed in 2018 to bring researchers and businesses together to turn scientific discoveries into commercial products, with the wider ambition that the area becomes a destination for bio-tech and digital industries. The multi-storey building chosen to house the facility started life as a general office. Hoare Leas task was to turn it into a world-leading science facility, complete with specialist laboratories for the college. One of the biggest challenges with the transformation was in delivering outside air to the various laboratories to replace the air extracted by the buildings 330 fume hoods. Their energy-efficient solution was to install a variable air volume system to supply the air needed, based on diversified loads, and then direct the supply to the laboratories based on demand. Dedicated local cooling is provided in areas of high heat gain, while LED lighting helps reduce energy use, which contributed to the building achieving a Breeam Excellent rating. laboratories. Generally, we allow 25W.m-2 for office small power but, in the lab space, weve allowed for 100W.m-2 because of the amount and types of equipment used, says Conor ODonoghue, operations director at Sweco. The WestWorks was an existing building with an existing electrical supply, so an additional power supply now serves the laboratory spaces. The existing energy centre serving the other White City Place buildings had spare capacity, so we took an HV [high-voltage] feed from that and used a separate transformer and feed to each tenancy, says ODonoghue, adding: As we had spare available power capacity in the energy centre that was supplied from an alternate UKPN primary substation, we used some of this spare capacity to meet the increased power demands of the lab spaces while providing diversity of supply for their critical operations. This additional feed has the benefit of adding electrical resilience by supplying each laboratory with power from two primary substations. It is a solution that will ensure the fridges and freezers in Engitixs new laboratory will operate come what may, so its scientists can continue with their pioneering drug-discovery work. CJ Office spaces within Synthaces facility THE LANDLORDS PERSPECTIVE When developer Stanhope purchased the BBCs Media Village in west London it set out to redevelop the site as a new business district. It rebranded the site White City Place and quickly refurbished two former BBC buildings now renamed The WestWorks and The Media Works to lease as office space. At the same time, Londons Imperial College was creating a new west London campus for its biomedical research and medical sciences facilities. This incorporated a new innovation district and business start-up facilities to help foster the commercialisation of the innovative biotech developments being discovered at the university (see panel, How Hoare Lea turned an office building into the Molecular Sciences Research Hub). These fledgling biotech businesses need space to grow. At the same time, other dynamic bio-tech business were being drawn to the area. We realised that there was a pent-up demand for space in London for life sciences that was not being provided, says Charles Walford, property director at Stanhope. Stanhope set about commercialising this demand by adapting unlet office floors in The WestWorks and The Media Works, to lease to startup and established biotech businesses as lab-enabled office space. There are currently five established life-sciences companies at White City Place, in addition to several start-ups. We were able to accommodate them primarily because we inherited some pretty robust buildings from the BBC, with an enhanced floor-toceiling height, says Walford. In addition to converting existing buildings, Stanhope is looking to develop lab-enabled new-build offices. Walford says there is currently no speculatively built space in central London suitable to lease to life-sciences businesses, although there are schemes in the pipeline because this sector is growing like mad, he says. Such new developments, however, are not without risk: There is no transaction evidence at the moment, so the risk for investors is that they have to spend 30% more on an office building to make it lab-enabled that might end up with office occupiers so you will have spent 30% more on your project, but without commanding the higher rent. 32 January 2021 www.cibsejournal.com CIBSE Jan21 pp30-32 Life sciences.indd 32 18/12/2020 17:07