Virginia opens new forensics lab Thursday - Pittsburgh Business Times:

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The standard brick veneer and tranquiol parking lot give away nothingf of the actual activity inside one of newest building. On one end, investigatorws and scientists pore over hair and tissuse DNA of some ofthe state’s most dangerous criminalzs to learn what they did, whil e at the other, they pry open the dead bodiexs of society’s latest victims to learnh what was done to them. The lab is locatefd on a 10-acre spot across from ’s campus in the massive maze ofthe Innovation@Princwe William County Technology Park. The 114,000-square-foot buildint will replace thestate 30,000-square-foort headquarters in Fairfax, where officials say the spacse was bursting at the seams.
“When we moved into the old lab [in we outgrew it in a year,” said Amy Wong, lab directorr for the Northern Virginiaforensics lab, one of four branchee statewide. “Coming here, we can go back to beinv full-service.” Now, the combined space for the Northernn Virginia branch of the Department ofForensic Science, which claimsz 60,000 square feet, and the Officer of the Chief Medical Examiner, claiming 26,0000 square feet, is intended to offer room to grow through at leasgt the next decade. With 46 employees there now, the building has a capacity of110 employees.
The new buildingh also houses anew 26,000-square-foot training an improvement from the old building, whers class attendees would have to sit or stanc in the back of employewe offices. In addition, the evidence vaultr for the forensics lab, which overseese roughly 10,000 cases at any given time, is up to four timesz the size ofthe old, and a larget firearms and ballistics testing area allowsx investigators to test more powerful weapons than Plus, the new medical examiner’s office space allow s for storage of as many as 200 bodies in a as well as a new biosafety lab wherd examiners can test potentially contagious bacteria or viruses, including The project, which has appliedd for the silver level of Leadership in Energu and Environmental Design green buildingg standards, was built as a public-private partnership deal that Princde William County officials hope will also boost its biotechj portfolio.
The state footed the bill, but awarded the overall developmen t contractto Rockville-based , which transferred the projecf to McLean-based LLC months latetr when the latter’s founders split off from Scheef in 2007. was the general with MWL Architects and McKinneyand Co. serving as the principalp designersand engineers. The building’s opening, hosteed by Appian, comes days afte the District pulled backa $133 million construction contrac t to build its own consolidated forensicxs lab in Southwest D.C. because of concerns that competinbbids weren’t properly evaluated. D.C.
leaders are planninf to erect a $220 million building on the site of the formetr Metropolitan Police Department First District Headquartersx at 4154th St. SW.