Share thisConstruction is a messy business in the best of circumstances—but trying to maintain a functioning vivarium while surrounded by the din, dirt, and disruption of construction is next to impossible. It happens often, though, with varying degrees of stress on the animals, lost or disrupted research, damage to facilities, and frayed nerves.
HERA recently consulted on a project that was to be constructed in phases. The vivarium would be built in the first phase, and the following phases would add more floors to the building—while the vivarium remained in operation below.
Before starting design on the project, we wanted to hear from the ultimate experts—the people working to keep their facilities functioning in the face of very difficult conditions—about how construction around and/or inside an occupied vivarium affects them. We posted a question to the AALAS COMPMED listserve to find out what problems were encountered, how the facility coped with them, and what lessons learned could be passed on by the “survivors.” Their stories, along with our own observations over several years, form the basis for this article.
There were plenty of horror stories—problems affected all aspects of the facilities’ operations, including:
- Temperature and humidity control issues
- Reduced production in breeding colonies
- Structural vibration bad enough to affect the performance of rats in behavioral studies
- Negative behaviors in mice, including increased fighting between males and cannibalism
- Experiments stopped, suspended, or delayed due to concerns about unreliable data because construction activities introduced uncontrollable variables
- Animals having to be moved to other buildings—not always buildings intended for animals—because their stress-induced behaviors were potentially harmful to themselves or the staff
- Water coming through the ceiling into one vivarium, as a result of demolition areas above the vivarium not being sealed against the weather
- A vivarium which suffered an infestation of disease-bearing wild rodents because the vivarium perimeter was not properly secured, requiring the entire facility be decontaminated
Fairy tales were harder to come by—every project had its share of problems, but in these cases, it was possible to mitigate the adverse effects to some extent by modifying vivarium operations and/or construction activities, including:
- Assigning a representative familiar with day-to-day vivarium operations— not necessarily a veterinarian—to the project team during construction
- Suspending research and/or breeding activities when feasible
- Giving the researchers adequate notice of particularly disruptive activities, so they could move their animals and/or reschedule experiments
- Using drilling, saw cutting, and hand tools in lieu of jackhammers and power tools for demolition work
- Scheduling highly-disruptive construction activities around time critical experiments or breeding events; grouping those activities over periods of a few days when vivarium activities could be suspended
- Increasing enrichment opportunities, such as “hiding tubes” and feed enrichments in mouse and rodent cages, which helped ease negative behaviors
- Vacating portions of the vivarium to accommodate the construction work and reoccupying them after the work was completed