A typical office may have a live load capacity of around 3-4kN/m.
Raised access floors will also ideally be sealed or removed to minimise future sources of contamination.For the lab fit-out itself, appropriate finishes must of course be selected, and this will be based on a wide-range of criteria such as cleaning material compatibility.. 10.
Defects.. Hidden defects in existing office buildings can add unexpected cost and delay to lab conversion projects..Existing offices, like all buildings, will almost always harbour some latent issues that will add complication during design or construction.This can range from old plant in need of an upgrade, to asbestos or structural defects.
Office to lab conversions can make good economic sense, however risks and realistic cost and programme contingencies should be captured from day one to avoid future disappointment.Early strip-out, surveys, and review of existing information including the Health and Safety File are all good practice.. 11.
Sustainability..
Existing offices may struggle to achieve the lab’s sustainability goals.. Reusing an existing building is one of the best ways to reduce carbon and achieve a project’s sustainability goals.We also added scenarios for a +/- 20% variation on process timings (for example, the welding stations), using a triangular distribution.. We defined key outputs to measure performance of the system, including schedule completion time (i.e.
how long it took to manufacture all trusses in the schedule) and average daily throughput, for comparison against expected market demand.We recorded buffer accumulation to test for process bottlenecks, as well as the number of occupied painting stations to check capacity against what had been previously assumed.. Case study - modelling conclusion.
The model was able to support several assumptions made for the design of the process, such as the allowances for buffers and painting bays.Additionally, the model could show that the system was sensitive to assumptions made for travel time of materials between stations, but that the different production schedules and variation in process time only resulted in slight variations in results.. With this simulation able to rapidly test multiple options and scenarios, the model can continue to be used to test further sensitivities in the process or be expanded to include even more of the system.