Facility Management, Maintenance and Operation Core

Project Summary Core 1: Facilities Management, Maintenance, and Operations Core The University of Missouri Regional Biocontainment Laboratory, the Laboratory for Infectious Disease Research (LIDR) is a stand-alone facility, located in the east side of campus, that was designed to support research on

select agent pathogens requiring biosafety level 3 (BSL-3) containment. Because of the safety and security risks associated with this research program, the LIDR follows strict site and building security procedures as well as a rigorous and comprehensive building maintenance schedule and strong personnel infrastructure to maintain

continuous operations of the biocontainment facility. The Facilities Management, Maintenance, and Operations Core (Core 1 of this UC7 application) is responsible for site and building security and proper functioning of all building systems. Operations and management of the BSL-3 containment areas involves dozens of trades,

needing HVAC, telecom, steam, hot-water boilers, campus steam, chilled water, electrical distribution, natural gas, emergency generator, CO2 distribution, water treatment and purification, effluent decontamination, and an on-site chiller for back-up chilled water. Together the building systems in conjunction with tested emergency

procedures provide redundancy for all off-normal events that could impact the containment areas and adversely affect research, laboratory workers, and/or the environment. The breadth of expertise needed to maintain building systems is provided by the MU Campus Facilities group, who employs tradesman in every area that are

assigned to preventive maintenance and repair duties. In addition, there are presently 57 select agent-approved individuals, along with daily and periodic visitors including building maintenance contractors, renovation contractors, skilled tradespeople, custodial staff, facility and program inspectors, and users from the broader

infectious disease community at MU. As LIDR BSL-3 laboratories are approved for select agent research, the site security and biosafety plans require a significant workforce dedicated to facilities management. The objectives of the proposed Facilities Management, Maintenance, and Operations Core are to increase

efficiencies of the BSL-3/ACL-3/ABSL-3 research program at LIDR, to train an outstanding biocontainment facilities workforce, and contribute to the RBL-NBL network by sharing of resources and best practices in the management of high containment facilities. To achieve these goals, the proposed core will work closely with the

BSL-3 Practices Core (core 2) and the Biocontainment Services and Research Resources Core (core 3) to provide synergy in meeting the needs of the BSL-3 and broader research communities in order to advance the development of novel medical countermeasures against high consequence bacterial and viral priority pathogens.