Share thisWhat are the costs to maintain a biocontainment facility? Can a proactive commissioning program mitigate the expense of operation? What should occur in design and construction to keep the owner’s team abreast, aware, and willing in regards to long term operational expenses?
The crown jewels of many learning and research institutions are the containment laboratories which reside on their campuses. Without question, these are some of themost expensive facilities to design and construct. The costs are justified for numerous reasons, including the promise that the research conducted may yield intellectual property rights and scientific discovery. This in turn will contribute to the long-term goals of these institutions and to mankind as a whole. From the mid 1950s to the end of the prior century, the number of high containment animal facilities was relatively static. However, the events of September 11, 2001 combined with Anthrax incidents changed the landscape of scientific research in the United States and fueled the rapid escalation of new containment facilities. By means of Federal Government grants and market capital availability, the desire of many institutions to design and build a containment laboratory became a reality. According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), “Most federal officials and experts believe that the number of BSL-4 labs in theUnited States is generally known, however, the number of BSL-3 labs are unknown. Information on expansion is available about high containment labs that are (1) registered with the CDC-USDA’s Select Agent Program, and (2) Federally funded. However, much less is known about the expansion of laboratories outside of the Select Agent Program and the non-federally funded laboratories; including location, activities, and ownership. For both BLS-3 and BSL-4, the expansion is taking place across many sectors—federal, state, academic, and private—and all over theUnited States.”1
Many of the new generation of containment laboratories have either recently become operational or will become operational in the near term. The costs of design and construction of containment laboratories are a greatly debated topic and worthy of many studies. Cost overruns and schedule delays have plagued many of these new projects. Even today there is much debate on ways to mitigate these costs, but one subject that seems absent in the debate is the cost to operate these facilities. During the rush to fund the projects, little if any, consideration was given to what it would take to keep these highly complex facilities operational. The reality is the cost of maintaining a high containment laboratory typically runs in excess of 300% of a noncontainment facility. Depending on a wide range of variables including species, agents in use, protocols, containment levels, and waste management/decontamination mandates, the O&M budgets will greatly vary.
Excluding labor, the single largest expense of a containment laboratory will be the operational budget. While the operational cost is significant, there are mitigating steps that should be explored beginning in the program phase to accurately plan, budget, and reduce the long-term operational cost.
Prior to 1990, all BSL-4 laboratories were federal labs—either at USAMRIID or at the CDC. Today,while federal expansion is taking place, there are seven newfacilities recently built, currently under construction, or planned, which have one ormore BSL-4 labs. There are also BSL-4 labs at universities, as part of state response, and in the private sector (Table 1).
While the number is difficult to quantify, many more BSL-3 labs are thought to exist compared with BSL-4 labs. Many lab owners—when building new labs or upgrading existing ones—are building to meet BSL-3 level containment; often anticipating future work, even though they intend for some time to operate at the BSL-2 level with BSL-2 recommended agents. In addition, muchbio-defensework involves aerosolization of agents for challenge studies, and most of this type of activity is recommended for containment at the BSL-3 level.