KSU to Add National Biosafety Facility

March 25, 2015March 31, 2015 1832 Views Central U.S., Gregory J. Offner, Kentucky, Manchester School District, medical correctional facility, Texas Charter School Association, the American Hospital Association, University of Kansas Hospital

MANHATTAN, Kan. — Construction on the National Bio and Agro-defense Facility (NBAF) at Kansas State University in Manhattan will likely begin in May, and is scheduled to take about five years. NBAF will be the country’s foremost animal disease research facility, and will study emerging, high-consequence livestock diseases that threaten animal and human health.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) selected the NBAF Design Partnership led by Perkins+Will in Atlanta as the architecture-engineering firm for the project, and McCarthy/Mortenson, Joint Venture as the construction firm. McCarthy is headquartered in St. Louis, while Mortenson holds local offices in Manhattan.

“NBAF is needed to confront foreign animal diseases that threaten America’s agricultural economy and food supply,” said Ron Trewyn, the university’s NBAF liaison, in a statement. “Building this lab is long overdue.”

The U.S. Congress passed a bill on March 3 to fund the remaining $300 million needed to finish the $1.25 billion animal disease research laboratory. Construction on the lab’s central utility has been underway since 2013 and is currently about 90 percent complete.

The new laboratory will replace the current one on Plum Island in New York. The aging facility does not currently meet the requirements identified in Homeland Security Presidential Directive 9, a report that said threats such as the global H1N1 outbreak to the country’s food and agriculture industry could have dire economic and potentially human health consequences for the U.S. As such, the DHS and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) are constructing the NBAF to help protect the nation’s animal agriculture and public health from these threats.

The NBAF will be a state-of-the-art laboratory with critical research adjacencies for the DHS and USDA to carry out their similar missions. NBAF will contain 574,000 square feet of facility space, which includes shared research space for Biosafety Levels 2, 3 and 4 to develop vaccines and other countermeasures. Approximately 10 percent of the space will be dedicated to Biosafety Level 4 research.

Construction on the NBAF is projected to peak in 2018 and 2019 when more than 875 construction personnel will be on site each day for a period of several weeks. Lab construction is slated for completion in December 2020, but it will likely take two years or more after that before NBAF is fully operational.

The facility will be adjacent to KSU’s Biosecurity Research Institute. This location places NBAF near important veterinary, agricultural and biosecurity research and expertise. Once lab operations begin, the research facility will have about 400 employees and generate $3.5 billion throughout the Kansas economy in the first 20 years of operation.

“This investment means Kansas will become a research epicenter, and the construction of this modern, world-class facility will ultimately create jobs for Kansans in the fields of engineering, science and technology,” said U.S. Senator Jerry Moran in a statement. “The talented young men and women who grow up here will have more opportunities to work and live in Kansas.”