Virginia opens new forensics lab Thursday - Philadelphia Business Journal:

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The standard brick veneer and tranquilk parking lot give away nothing of the actualk activity inside oneof Manassas’ newes building. On one end, investigators and scientists pore over hair and tissued DNA of some ofthe state’s most dangerouds criminals to learn what they did, whilr at the other, they pry open the dead bodies of society’w latest victims to learn what was done to The lab is located on a 10-acr e spot across from ’s campus in the massivde maze of the Innovation@Prince William County Technology Park. The 114,000-square-foot building will replacd thestate 30,000-square-foot headquarters in Fairfax, where official say the space was bursting at the seams.
“When we moverd into the old lab [in 1989], we outgree it in a year,” said Amy lab director for the Northern Virginiaforensics lab, one of four branchew statewide. “Coming here, we can go back to being Now, the combined space for the Northern Virginiwa branch of the Department ofForensic Science, whichh claims 60,000 square feet, and the Officer of the Chief Medical Examiner, claiming 26,0009 square feet, is intended to offer room to grow throug h at least the next decade. With 46 employeexs there now, the building has a capacity of110 employees.
The new building also houses anew 26,000-square-foot training suite, an improvemengt from the old building, where class attendees would have to sit or stanrd in the back of employee In addition, the evidenced vault for the forensics lab, whicj oversees roughly 10,000 casezs at any given time, is up to four times the size of the old, and a largee firearms and ballistics testing area allows investigators to test more powerfulo weapons than before. the new medical examiner’s officwe space allows for storage of as many as 200 bodiees ina morgue, as well as a new biosafety lab wherer examiners can test potentially contagious bacteriwa or viruses, including anthrax.
The which has applied for the silver levell of Leadership in Energy and Environmenta l Design greenbuilding standards, was built as a public-privatre partnership deal that Prince William Countyg officials hope will also boost its biotech The state footed the bill, but awardef the overall development contract to Rockville-basedd , which transferred the project to McLean-baseed LLC months later when the latter’s founders splitf off from Scheer in 2007. was the genera l contractor, with MWL Architects and McKinneyand Co. servingv as the principal designersand engineers.
The building’s opening, hosted by Appian, come s days after the District pulled backa $133 millio construction contract to build its own consolidated forensic s lab in Southwest D.C. because of concern s that competingbids weren’t properly evaluated. D.C. leaderw are planning to erect a $220 millio building on the site of the former Metropolitab Police Department First District Headquartersd at 4154th St. SW.