Lamont recalls an incident whereby a local council reported a noise complaint early in the morning, thought to be caused by the construction site operating outside of consented hours.

A laboratory is a space in which a number of processes are undertaken in a methodical order, similar to any production line or manufacturing facility.Understanding these processes seems like an obvious element in laboratory design, but members within the client team often have differing opinions as to the scope.. A good client will always call on the expertise of the lab users - the scientists - to help define the brief.

Meeting with those users to understand the processes being undertaken is fundamental to delivering a successful laboratory design project.However, this can lead to budget issues; the laboratory designer must evaluate the costs of the users’ requests against the functionality of the lab to determine the scope.Some clients will have a very clear scope, especially if the lab is an expansion or extension of an existing process, but some clients will need help in creating the scope, especially for new processes.

It should also be noted that users often have a fixed solution in mind based on what they have done in the past - their solution may not be the best for the laboratory design project, and it is our job to challenge their assumptions and offer alternative, perhaps better, solutions..Lab processes can be grouped into distinct functional spaces, for example: dry processes, milling, synthesis or analytics.

These functional spaces are theoretical zones which have no spatial definition, acting as a visual way of defining a group of processes which are related to one another..

Working with users to categorise the laboratory processes into these distinct functional spaces enables us to generate flow diagrams for the process..Once the optimal design for a site is decided upon, the digital model, already aware of the required mechanical electrical components, wall types, doors, structural components and so on, is able to generate a LOD 400 bill of materials quality BIM model very quickly.. It’s worth stressing that using modern methods of construction in this way doesn’t mean taking jobs away from people.

There’s so much to be designed!MMC will simply enable us to keep up with the needs of society.

The more buildings that can be described by technical standards, state-based standards and rule sets ripe for some form of algorithmic design, the more we will be able to design more efficiently, more quickly and to a higher quality.This digital process will then feed all the way down through manufacturing, assembly automation and construction, with the ultimate benefits finding their way onto site..