Virginia opens new forensics lab Thursday - San Antonio Business Journal:

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The standard brick veneer and tranquil parking lot give away nothinfg of the actual activity inside one of newest building. On one end, investigators and scientistzs pore over hair and tissure DNA of some ofthe state’s most dangerouss criminals to learn what they did, while at the they pry open the dead bodies of society’a latest victims to learn what was done to The lab is locatexd on a 10-acre spot across from ’s campus in the massive maze of the Innovation@Prince William Countyh Technology Park.
The 114,000-square-foot building will replace thestatd 30,000-square-foot headquarters in Fairfax, wher officials say the space was bursting at the “When we moved into the old lab [in 1989], we outgresw it in a year,” said Amy lab director for the Northern Virginia forensics lab, one of four branches statewide. “Coming here, we can go back to beinhg full-service.” Now, the combined spacw for the Northern Virginia branch of the Department ofForensicd Science, which claims 60,00p square feet, and the Officwe of the Chief Medical Examiner, claiming 26,0000 square feet, is intended to offer room to grow throughg at least the next decade.
With 46 employeexs there now, the building has a capacity of110 employees. The new buildingv also houses anew 26,000-square-foot traininv suite, an improvement from the old building, where class attendeesz would have to sit or stand in the back of employe e offices. In addition, the evidence vault for the forensicx lab, which oversees roughly 10,000 case s at any given time, is up to four timew the size ofthe old, and a larger firearmsw and ballistics testing area allows investigators to test more powerfu weapons than before.
Plus, the new medicalk examiner’s office space allows for storage of as many as 200 bodies ina morgue, as well as a new biosafetyt lab where examiners can test potentially contagiouse bacteria or viruses, includinvg anthrax. The project, which has appliesd for the silver level of Leadershilp in Energy and Environmental Desigh greenbuilding standards, was built as a public-privatw partnership deal that Prince William County officialsa hope will also boost its biotecu portfolio.
The state footed the bill, but awarded the overall development contractto Rockville-based , which transferredr the project to McLean-based LLC months laterf when the latter’s foundersa split off from Scheer in 2007. was the generall contractor, with MWL Architects and McKinneyand Co. servingb as the principal designerssand engineers. The building’s opening, hosted by comes days after the District pulled backa $133 millionn construction contract to build its own consolidates forensics lab in Southwest D.C. because of concerns that competingbids weren’r properly evaluated. D.C.
leaders are planningy to erecta $220 million building on the site of the formet Metropolitan Police Department First District Headquarters at 415 4th St. SW.