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Fruit of a Long Labor
An
arduous building design project at the National Institute of Standards
and Technology has resulted in some of the most advanced labs in the world
for taking scientific measurements
By Tom Gibson
After exiting Interstate-270 in
Gaithersburg, Maryland, I come to the National Institute of Standards
and Technology a short distance from the highway. Driving through the
vast campus, I see open grassy areas with people playing frisbee football,
bicycling, and running on their lunch hour. A herd of deer cavort in another
area.
Meanwhile, in a far corner of the complex stood three concrete
buildings surrounding two open fields with funny-looking piping sticking
up. The buildings blend in with the rest of the campus with its nondescript
structures. With all the bustle and distractions, some people probably
take these for granted, if they notice them at all. But rest assured the
scientists that will soon work here don’t.
Some of the most technologically advanced buildings in the world, these
comprise the new Advanced Measurement Laboratory (AML) nearing completion.
The five-building complex consists of the three buildings you see above
gro und and two underground structures -- the funny piping in the fields
protrudes from these. The AML will feature sophisticated control of vibration,
temperature, humidity, electrical power quality, and air cleanliness,
allowing scientists to take quantum leaps in their research capabilities.
The AML has come to fruition after a long, ten-year project that had a
team of engineers wearing many hats and coming together on a mission.
Todd Snouffer, deputy project manager, says: “One of the things
I most enjoy on the project is having to deal with different disciplines
on any given day. At any one time or any given hour, we might be dealing
with soils issues, structural issues, architectural and finish issues,
vibration isolation and temperature control.”
Founded in 1901, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
is a non-regulatory federal agency within the U.S. Commerce Department's
Technology Administration. NIST's mission: to develop and promote measurement,
standards, and technology to enhance productivity, facilitate trade, and
improve public health and safety and environmental quality. They operate
facilities in two locations, including the 578-acre complex in Gaithersburg,
the headquarters, and another 208-acre site in Boulder Colorado. The organization
employs some 3,000 scientists, engineers, technicians, and support personnel,
who conduct research in a wide variety of physical and engineering sciences.
NIST’s Gaithersburg campus was built in the mid 1960s
and ranked as state-of-the-art at the time. But the world of scientific
measurement has advanced a step or two since then. Today, scientists and
engineers can locate and manipulate single atoms on a surface; detect
ultratrace amounts of chemicals; and measure optical, physical, and quantum
properties of components for telecommunications devices and semiconductor
chips. Deteriorating conditions in NIST’s older labs currently limit
the quality, accuracy, and productivity of many of these efforts. The
AML, a $235-million project, will give NIST the ability to provide industry
and science with the best measurements and standards in the world. As
Snouffer puts it, “The main thing we’re looking to do is take
NIST for the next 30 to 40 years as far as their facilities go.”
Recruiting
a Team
The AML began taking root in 1993, when NIST initiated a design project
for a new facility. Chris Conley was chief of the Plant Division Facilities
Engineering Office, and Snouffer worked for him. The division handled
facilities planning, design, construction, maintenance and repairs. Conley
and Snouffer, both mechanical engineers, were reassigned to form a new
NIST Capital Improvements Facilities Program office, working under the
NIST Director of Administration. Conley was made project manager for AML
and Snouffer deputy project manager. Soon, two others, K.C. Patel, a structural
engineer, and Nancy Snyder, a CADD technician, also came to the staff
from the Facilities Engineering Office. “We were given a $105 million
budget in 1993 and told to go for it. We had overall control of the design
-- not the specifics of the architecture, but the technical requirements
as far as the mechanical and electrical facilities in the buildings,”
Snouffer recalls.
At the beginning, NIST hired HDR as the main consulting
firm for the project. Headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, HDR covers architecture
and many disciplines of engineering through offices around the country,
and they had previous experience in designing hospitals and high-tech
labs. HDR’s local branch office is in Alexandria, Virginia, where
most of the engineers are structural types. To fill out their project
team, the firm brought in expertise from their offices all over the country.
As the NIST team’s first job, members conducted engineering studies
to see if a new building was feasible. They sent a team through a number
of standards laboratories in Europe to see what design concepts existed,
pulling in ideas from different areas. Engineers and scientists also visited
private and government labs in the U.S. to take stock of high-tech research
facilities.
“The AML is more stringent in its environment than just about any
other laboratory in the country,” Snouffer states in detailing the
team’s design process. When it came to minimizing vibrations in
the lab buildings, for example, they had to develop standards for vibration.
This involved using finite element analysis (FEA) to model structures.
“We were interested in maintaining very low levels of vibration,
below one hertz.” Based on HDR’s design, they built a working
mechanical mockup of a high-accuracy temperature control lab in an existing
building. “We tested three different manufacturers’ controls
to show that we would have multiple bidders to bid that.”
NIST and HDR completed design of the AML in 1997. But that
same year, the government pulled funding for the project, putting it on
hold. Funding resumed in 2000, and the team awarded a construction contract
and broke ground, with the buildings going up in phases. Construction
on the Clean Room (Building 215) started in December 2000 and finished
April 2003, while work on Instrument East (Building 216) began January
2001 and ended November 2002. Instrument West (Building 217) started February
2002 and was completed August 2003. Construction on Metrology East (Building
218) was complete April 2003, and construction on Metrology West (Building
219) began December 2000 and finished October 2003.
In describing the experience, Snouffer relates, “It’s been
a roller coaster, with ups and downs. The up periods came when we were
working at a breakneck pace getting lots of things done, doing things
people hadn’t even tried with the federal procurement system. That
was very exciting to break down some of the barriers between the engineering
staff and the procurement staff.” To facilitate matters, the two
groups were put together in the same office. “That period was very
exciting because we had upwards of eight or ten major projects going on
at once. You hit the bottom when the funding goes away and you’re
diverted to other tasks for a couple years. And then you’re back
into the construction, so everything comes back up on top of the roller
coaster again.”
Diverse
Perspectives
For the last three years, Bruce Barackman has served as the on-site project
architect for HDR, while Jim Bartlett has been the on-site quality assurance
program manager for the NIST engineering team. Bartlett marvels at how
Barackman shuttles back and forth all day between his office and the work
site correcting problems that arise.
With a BSEE and a masters degree in engineering administration with a
specialty in construction management, Bartlett brings a wealth of experience
to the job. He spent 34 years in the federal government working for the
Navy, including 12 years of active duty as assistant resident in charge
of construction and 22 years in the reserves and as a civilian. He managed
construction projects in far-flung outposts such as Vietnam, the Solomon
Islands, and European countries. When he retired from the Navy in 2001,
NIST hired him as a consultant for the AML project.
Their perspective leads Barackman and Bartlett to comment on the uniqueness
of building the AML. “The complexity of this project far surpasses
your typical commercial office building,” Barackman says. Bartlett
adds, “The amount of heating, ventilating, and air conditioning
in this project is just phenomenal. Part of the challenge was convincing
the work force, the contractor, that this is not your normal, everyday
construction project.”
Each
of the AML’s five wings has one level housing laboratory space and
one or two levels for mechanical equipment and environmental controls.
The two sections below ground were put there for improved vibration isolation
and temperature control. Snouffer points out that one problem they encountered
in constructing a building underground is that it lies below the water
table. They devised a 30-gallons-per-minute (GPM) pumping system that
pumps out water from around the building around the clock. They also sealed
the building as a backup in case pumps fail. Snouffer says, “We
took a belt, suspenders, and safety pin approach.”
As Snouffer and Bartlett took me on a tour of the shiny new AML, construction
and maintenance crews were cleaning up and laying floor tiles. First,
we ventured into Building 217 Instrument West. They told how all the labs
are on one level, rather than stacked on different floors, so they won’t
impart vibrations to each other. In a typical lab room, Bartlett looks
up and explains, “All the labs are modular. You’ll notice
steel tubes running along the ceiling overhead. The walls fit in slots
in those tubes. It can be changed around. That’s the key.”
We then peered in a galley running through the center of the building
with labs on either side. This houses utility lines that feed the labs.
Snouffer showed how they can be reconfigured for different lab setups.
Next they told how achieving vibration isolation was accomplished by having
separate concrete slabs up to two feet thick for floors and walls with
isolation joints between them consisting of an elastomeric caulk. In some
cases, they also set a slab on air springs. The reason for all this: to
reduce vibration to sensitive experiments measuring atomic distances of
just a few nanometers (billionths of a meter).
Moving on, we come to a Class 100 clean room that will provide the air
cleanliness needed for more sensitive research. Dust or other stray particles
can foul measurements on atomic-scale devices. Bartlett comments, “A
dust particle is like a boulder compared to those atoms.” He adds,
“We have to wear hair nets and booties when we work in there.”
Ventilation air comes straight down in laminar form from the ceiling and
passes through vents in the floor to a plenum underneath. Mechanical equipment
sits on the roof. This is no small affair, as some 50 to 60 air handling
units comprise the system. Air passes through high-efficiency HEPA filters.
Next stop: Building 218 Metrology East, located underground. At one level
appears a maze of ducts, pipes, and air handling units. Snouffer points
out that ducts were hung with two-direction isolators to minimize their
vibration; these use a rubber element in one direction and a spring in
the other.
At another lab, Snouffer remarks, “This is a high-accuracy temperature
control lab.” He explains the extent of the this. “The current
temperature control in laboratories is about plus or minus two degrees
F. at best. In the AML, as the baseline, each laboratory is guaranteed
to have plus or minus a quarter of a degree C. minimum. We’ve got
that throughout the building as standard. And we’ve got another
36 high-accuracy temperature control labs that are plus or minus one tenth
of a degree C. From there, there are another 12 labs guaranteed to plus
or minus one one hundredth of a degree C.”
Humidity ranks high as another variable to control because certain instruments,
measurements, and chemical reactions are extremely sensitive to it. Systems
will minimize humidity variations to no more than one percent in special
metrology laboratory sections and five percent throughout the rest of
the facility.
Improved electrical power quality also will come with the new labs. In
existing NIST labs, spikes and dips in the voltage and current can affect
sensitive measurements. The AML has an uninterruptable power system (UPS)
and a 1000-kilowatt diesel generator to serve critical areas such as clean
rooms. Critical experiments can continue to run in the event of a voltage
fluctuation or power outage.
Grand
Finale
Near the end of the tour, we come to a lab that may serve as the ultimate
showcase. “This lab has temperature, vibration, and cleanliness
control all in one,” Snouffer announces. It will house a molecular
measuring machine used in semiconductor fabrication. Some clean rooms
such as this will see 300 air changes an hour compared with six for a
typical office. Snouffer points out that the ventilation system makes
very little noise, only a slight hum, because they kept the air speed
in ducts low by having many ducts, minimizing vibration. The labs had
dual interior walls with return air flowing through the space between
the walls. In temperature control rooms, light tubes will be used during
experiments because they emit less heat than bulb-type lights. These look
like a PVC pipe about five inches in diameter circling the room near the
ceiling, with the light resembling black light.
Except for last-minute cleanup and touchup details, the labs appear ready
to help scientists carry out their mission. NIST is in process of testing
and commissioning the buildings, and they will outfit them in coming months,
with relocation to be complete in June 2004.
The engineering team feels a sense of relief and satisfaction at the end
of their long journey. As Barackman says, “It was an education for
everybody. Keeping abreast of all the items and meshing everything together
has been a full plate for the last three years.” Snouffer adds,
“If the scientists can look into their apparatus and see something
better than they saw before they moved into the new building, then we’ve
done our job.”
As we walk back to the office, Bartlett reveals, “This is a heck
of a project for me. It caps off my career nicely.” He doesn’t
plan to retire just yet, but he knows he will soon. When he does, he and
the other engineers will leave behind a project that will allow scientists
to carry out cutting-edge research and help businesses for decades to
come.
For more information on NIST and the Advanced Measurement Laboratory, visit www.nist.gov/public_affairs/amlbrochure.htm
Progressive
Engineer
Editor: Tom Gibson
2049 Crossroads Drive, Lewisburg, PA 17837
570-568-8444 * progress@jdweb.com
©2004 Progressive Engineer