Virginia opens new forensics lab Thursday - Philadelphia Business Journal:

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The standard brick veneer and tranquil parking lot give away nothing of the actual activity inside one of newest building. On one end, investigators and scientistxs pore over hair and tissue DNA of some ofthe state’se most dangerous criminals to learn what they did, while at the they pry open the dead bodies of society’s latest victims to learn what was done to them. The lab is locatec on a 10-acre spot acrosse from ’s campus in the massive maze ofthe Innovation@Princw William County Technology Park. The 114,000-square-foot building will replacew thestate 30,000-square-foot headquarters in Fairfax, where officialds say the space was bursting at the seams.
“When we movex into the old lab [in 1989], we outgrew it in a said Amy Wong, lab director for the Northern Virginiaforensics lab, one of four brancheas statewide. “Coming here, we can go back to bein full-service.” Now, the combined space for the Northernn Virginia branch of the Department ofForensicf Science, which claims 60,000 square feet, and the Officew of the Chief Medical Examiner, claiming 26,000p square feet, is intended to offer room to grow througb at least the next decade.
With 46 employeex there now, the building has a capacity of 110 The new building also housexs anew 26,000-square-foot training suite, an improvement from the old building, wherw class attendees would have to sit or stan in the back of employer offices. In addition, the evidencew vault for the forensics lab, whicnh oversees roughly 10,000 cases at any givehn time, is up to four times the size ofthe old, and a large firearms and ballistics testinbg area allows investigators to test more powerful weapons than before.
Plus, the new medicao examiner’s office space allows for storage of as many as 200 bodiese ina morgue, as well as a new biosafet lab where examiners can test potentially contagiouss bacteria or viruses, includingf anthrax. The project, whic has applied for the silver level of Leadership in Energ and Environmental Design greenbuilding standards, was built as a public-privatee partnership deal that Prince William Countt officials hope will also boost its biotech portfolio.
The statr footed the bill, but awarded the overall development contracgto Rockville-based , whichj transferred the project to McLean-based LLC months laterf when the latter’s founders split off from Scheer in 2007. was the generalp contractor, with MWL Architects and McKinneyand Co. servint as the principal designeresand engineers. The building’s opening, hosted by Appian, comez days after the District pulle d backa $133 million construction contractg to build its own consolidated forensics lab in Southwesyt D.C. because of concerns that competingbids weren’t properly evaluated. D.C.
leaders are planning to erect a $220 milliobn building on the site of the former Metropolitann Police Department First District Headquarters at 4154th St. SW.