23 



We have seen, as we look back in history, versus where they are today, that 

 the views and the importance of maintenance and repair is significantly im- 

 proving in terms of their maintenance allocations. 



Senator Sarbanes. I'd like to ask the people from the labs, how quickly 

 advances in technology, in effect, date the lab? 



Dr. Murrell. How quickly the research is moving affects the laboratory? 



Senator Sarbanes. Makes the lab outdated. In other words, you come 

 along and you do a state-of-the-art lab, and so on, and then the nature of the 

 conditions you require for the experiment seems to constantly be escalating. 

 So then you say, we built this brand-new lab, state-of-the-art, X-number of 

 years ago and now it doesn't work any more. Or, if you have a rigorous repair 

 and maintenance program, can you stay abreast of things? That is a very gen- 

 eral question, but I am interested. 



Dr. Murrell. I think it's a very good question. 



Senator Sarbanes. Suppose you have everything at Beltsville right up 

 where you want it. And then you look to the future and someone says, you are 

 going to have to, in effect, redo this whole thing. Or could someone say, look, 

 if we really pay attention to this place and do a reasonable amount of mainte- 

 nance and repair, we can have a more extended life for these facilities. 



Dr. Murrell. Yes, I think that's really the case. In the past, I don't think 

 anyone appreciated how fast research was going to move in new directions 

 with new technologies. 



Second, I don't think it was appreciated that the conditions under which 

 research is going to have to be carried out, from a safety standpoint, was also 

 going to change. 



We didn't have the concerns 20 years ago of containment in transgenic 

 plant and animal research. And recombinant DNA work requires much dif- 

 ferent standards of good laboratory practice than we generaUy had 20 years 

 ago. 



The newest laboratory at Beltsville was completed in 1970. We call it the 

 bioscience building. It's about 70,000 or 80,000 square feet. Today, it's al- 

 most obsolete for any kind of research. By the way, that building won an 

 award for the architect who designed that building as a laboratory building 

 But today, we are probably going to have to move all the scientists and the 

 staffs out of there, gut it out and rebuild it, because the ventilation and H 

 VAC systems are not adequate for the kinds of research that they have to tak< 

 on today. 



Now, the lesson we've learned from that is that we need to design thes< 

 buildings in a modular, or a more generic, way that gives us the flexibility t( 

 make those changes. 



That building, when it was designed under the concepts 20 years ago, wa 

 built so specific and so specialized that there was no flexibility at all in th 

 building. But I think we've learned our lesson. That's a factor that we buil 

 into all of our designs now, to have flexibility. It's extremely critical. We car 

 not predict 20 years from now what we're going to be doing in those building 



Mr. Ficca. Dr. Murrell makes an excellent point. When the cornerstor 

 for the NIH Clinical Center was laid, the state-of-the-art was the iron lun 

 That building was not built for expansion. It was not built to accommoda 

 the kinds of high-technology that is needed today. 



