A laboratory construction brief should explain the work the facility must support, the people and materials moving through it, the rooms and equipment required, the hazards and applicable regulatory conditions, and the project’s constraints and outcomes. The tender pack turns that brief into coordinated drawings, specifications, schedules, bidder instructions, scope boundaries, evaluation criteria, and commissioning and handover requirements. Define these inputs before soliciting design fees or construction bids: late discovery of containment, equipment, or ventilation needs can change both scope and cost.
This guide is for owners, research managers, facilities leaders, and procurement teams planning a new laboratory, renovation, extension, or repurposing. It is a planning framework, not a project specification or legal tender template. Have the project’s qualified design professionals, environmental health and safety (EHS) team, facilities authorities, and relevant regulators confirm the codes, standards, approvals, quantities, and performance criteria for the laboratory and jurisdiction.
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What the construction brief needs to establish
The brief is the owner’s account of what is being built or changed and what the completed facility must enable. It gives designers a basis for programming and gives bidders a common understanding of the project. Record assumptions and known unknowns rather than leaving bidders to infer them.
Project purpose, boundaries, and outcomes
Identify the project type: new build, extension, renovation, replacement, or repurposing. Describe the scientific or clinical work, its anticipated scale and throughput, the operating model, user groups, and likely changes in staffing or research over the planning horizon. State what successful completion means in operational terms, including what must be ready for the laboratory to begin work.
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Set out the project boundary and its interfaces. Include known site and existing-building conditions, connections to shared building systems, phasing, continuity requirements for ongoing work, budget and schedule assumptions, and any limits on access or disruption. Name the accountable decision-makers and the user, facilities, procurement, engineering, and safety stakeholders who will approve requirements and resolve conflicts.
CASRAI’s guidance recommends documenting space types, containment or regulatory level, projected headcount, and known equipment before requesting proposals. Those details help teams price a defined project rather than make incompatible assumptions about what the owner wants.
Room program and operational relationships
Prepare a room-by-room schedule. For each space, record its purpose, target area or capacity, users, activities, occupancy, operational relationships, and required separation or adjacency. Include write-up areas, storage, receiving, circulation, support rooms, and shared functions when they are within the project scope.
Diagram relevant workflows for staff, samples and materials, equipment, waste, and visitors. Show where routes intersect, where clean and potentially contaminated activities need separation, and how materials enter and leave the facility. A wet laboratory, dry laboratory, open modular suite, fixed-room facility, or containment laboratory can have very different spatial and service needs; explain what the chosen form means for this project instead of relying on a label alone.
Constraints and planning assumptions
Record factors that shape design but may not be obvious from the room list: existing structure and services, restricted working hours, temporary operations, equipment delivery routes, construction phasing, and dependencies on other projects. Identify which information is confirmed, which is provisional, and who is responsible for resolving each open item. This distinction lets bidders identify allowances, exclusions, surveys, and decisions needed before a fixed price or final design is credible.
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What safety and regulatory information to provide
Attach or summarize a project-specific risk and needs assessment. State which types of hazards are expected and how the work will use them. As applicable, provide chemical inventories with quantities and uses; cryogenic liquids; compressed gases; biological agents; radioactive materials; and other process hazards. Identify the relevant biosafety or containment levels, clinical or quality requirements, radiation controls, chemical storage and waste needs, and institutional committees or authorities whose review is required.
Bring EHS into design scoping, not just final review. Cornell’s laboratory planning guidance identifies chemical inventories as an early scoping input and notes that ventilation needs can depend on volatile chemicals, hazardous gases, biological agents, heat, and equipment exhaust. It also identifies airflow direction, fume hoods, exposure-control devices, biological safety, and related equipment as matters for project discussion. These are inputs to project-specific design—not universal numeric specifications.
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Name the expected codes, regulations, standards, and owner design criteria, including jurisdiction and edition where known. Avoid relying on a blanket requirement to “comply with all standards”: it does not tell bidders which criteria inform their work or make competing proposals comparable. Ask the design team and owner’s safety and facilities authorities to confirm the applicable list. NIH’s Design Requirements Manual is an example of owner-specific policy for NIH facilities, with revisions issued by chapter; it should not be treated as a universal laboratory code. CLSI QMS04 addresses medical laboratory design and leaves structural and base-building matters to project consultants, so its scope should not be generalized to every facility.
For biosafety context, the World Health Organization’s fourth-edition Laboratory Biosafety Manual includes seven subject-specific monographs. Their existence does not establish a containment level or design value for a particular project; the owner and qualified professionals must determine the applicable basis.
Which equipment and utility schedules to prepare
List known fixed and movable equipment, including casework, fume hoods, biological safety cabinets, autoclaves, freezers, imaging systems, and large instruments. Provide manufacturer and model only when selected or required. If equipment is not yet chosen, specify its performance and interface requirements rather than inventing a product selection.
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For each item, capture the information that can affect layout, structure, building systems, delivery, or installation:
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- Power requirements, including emergency power where needed; heat rejection and any cooling needs.
- Water, drainage, process water, gases, vacuum, compressed air, network and data, and exhaust connections.
- Vibration sensitivity, environmental limits, delivery route, and installation constraints.
Then coordinate these equipment requirements with a room-level services schedule. Record normal and emergency power, lighting, plumbing, process water, laboratory gases and other specialty services, ventilation and exhaust, communications, and required environmental conditions for each room. The aim is to make the relationship between work, equipment, architecture, and mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) design visible before those elements are developed separately.
How to state performance and operational requirements
Describe the outcomes the completed spaces and systems must deliver: workflow, designed containment and directional airflow, environmental conditions, emergency response provisions, accessibility, maintainability, cleaning and decontamination, resilience, and safe operation. For each requirement, distinguish whether it is code-mandated, owner-defined, or a recommendation for this project. Ask the design team to identify the evidence that will demonstrate compliance and operational readiness.
Set expectations for testing, balancing, certification, training, and acceptance documentation. Do not insert generic airflow rates, face velocities, pressure differentials, or biosafety assumptions without a project-specific basis. Laboratory ventilation and containment depend on the hazards, equipment, intended operation, and applicable standards; the responsible professionals must establish project values.
What to put in the tender pack
The pack should make the work, interfaces, deliverables, commercial assumptions, and evaluation method understandable to each bidder. Its exact contents depend on procurement route and project stage, but the following components are common.
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| Pack component | What it should tell bidders |
|---|---|
| Invitation and bidder instructions | Procurement timetable, site-visit rules, question process, submission format, required declarations, and proposal validity. |
| Owner’s brief and room program | Intended use, staffing and workflow assumptions, hazards, room and equipment schedules, site constraints, project outcomes, and identified unknowns. |
| Scope of services or works | Included consultant disciplines and contractor packages, design stages, surveys and existing-conditions work, coordination duties, submittals, construction administration, commissioning, training, closeout, and handover. |
| Drawings and technical specifications | Coordinated documents at the appropriate stage, applicable codes and owner standards, schedules, equipment interfaces, materials and finishes, life-safety provisions, and performance criteria. |
| Commercial and delivery information | Contract form, packaging, delivery route, responsibilities, phasing, site access, schedule milestones, pricing format, allowances, exclusions, alternates, and change control. |
| Bid evaluation criteria | Laboratory-specific experience, named personnel and specialist partners, relevant references, technical approach, schedule, fee and exclusions, change-management record, regulatory capability, commissioning plan, and coordination quality. |
| Commissioning and closeout | Who verifies installed performance, who witnesses tests, what acceptance records are required, and which documents, training, and unresolved items must be delivered before handover. |
Define scope boundaries explicitly
State whether laboratory planning, MEP engineering, code consulting, EHS or safety input, and independent commissioning sit within a prime consultant’s scope or are procured separately. Define survey responsibilities, coordination across disciplines, review periods, construction-phase services, submittal responsibilities, and who responds when an equipment or utility interface changes. A tender based on an unclear program or split responsibilities can produce non-comparable proposals and later scope disputes.
Make price and delivery assumptions visible
Tell bidders how to present fees or works pricing and how to identify allowances, exclusions, alternates, and assumptions. Set out site access, phasing, milestone dates, delivery route, and change-control process. Compare design-bid-build, design-build, and construction-manager approaches against the project’s allocation of design coordination and construction risk, schedule needs, and desired cost certainty. No procurement method is best for every laboratory; the owner’s requirements and contracting rules determine the fit.
Specify meaningful bid evaluation
Ask for relevant completed laboratory projects at comparable hazard, containment, or regulatory levels. Evaluate the actual staff assigned—not only the firm’s general credentials—and confirm laboratory planning, MEP, safety, code, and commissioning coverage. Check references for schedule and budget performance and change management. Require bidders to disclose scope gaps and fee assumptions so that a low fee is not mistaken for a complete offer.
Assign commissioning and handover
Identify who will verify installed performance against design intent, who will witness the relevant tests, and what must be accepted before occupancy. Depending on the design, the closeout scope may include system balancing and functional testing; containment or life-safety verification; equipment-to-utility interface validation; training; operations and maintenance information; as-built records; warranties; and a process for tracking unresolved items. Consider independent commissioning where feasible, and state who owns that appointment and deliverable.
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The WHO’s 2020 manual describes a typical laboratory project as moving from a facility idea or requirement through planning, design, construction, commissioning, and operation and maintenance. Use that sequence to put approvals in the right order:
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- Approve the need and risk basis. Confirm the facility purpose, project boundary, operating assumptions, hazards, and required reviews.
- Approve the room and equipment program. Resolve the major workflows, room relationships, known equipment, and utility needs before asking teams to price design.
- Select the delivery route and design team. Match procurement and team capabilities to the project’s coordination, risk, schedule, and cost requirements.
- Develop and approve the design. Coordinate architecture, equipment, MEP, safety, code, and owner requirements; resolve open assumptions as the design advances.
- Issue tender documents and evaluate bids. Provide a consistent brief, scope, drawings, specifications, commercial format, and evaluation criteria to all bidders.
- Award and coordinate construction. Manage submittals, interfaces, phasing, changes, and required owner reviews against the agreed scope.
- Commission, verify, and hand over. Complete defined tests, training, records, and operating-responsibility transfer before the facility is accepted for use.
Approval and procurement stages vary by project type, owner, and jurisdiction. The sequence is a planning aid, not a substitute for the institution’s approvals or contract process.
How to shortlist the design team and compare proposals
Treat laboratory design as coordinated professional services, not a generic building-design purchase. Shortlist on relevant completed facilities and comparable hazards or regulatory requirements. Confirm named staff, specialist partners, and engineering coverage; ask for references that can speak to schedule, budget, and change management; and document fee and scope boundaries before contract execution.
Use the same comparison criteria for every proposal:
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- Experience with the laboratory type and hazard or containment level.
- Named team capability and availability across laboratory planning, MEP, safety, code, and commissioning.
- Comparable references and evidence of schedule, budget, and change-order management.
- Scope completeness, excluded disciplines, deliverables, and fee assumptions.
- How the proposed delivery route allocates design coordination, construction risk, schedule, and cost certainty.
- Commissioning independence, planned performance evidence, and closeout responsibilities.
Do not treat these items as interchangeable scores without considering project priorities. For example, a technically strong proposal with unassigned commissioning responsibility still leaves a material gap, while a broad firm portfolio does not establish that the proposed staff have the relevant experience.
What the brief cannot decide on its own
The country, laboratory type, biosafety or quality regime, procurement route, and owner contracting rules determine which legal and technical requirements apply. International biosafety guidance, U.S. NIH and university guidance, medical-laboratory standards, and professional procurement advice do not have interchangeable scope. Use the brief to make project needs explicit, then have the appropriate qualified architect and engineers, EHS and facilities authorities, and relevant regulators validate codes, quantities, design values, approvals, and tender conditions for the specific facility.
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