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R&D Magazine’s
2008 Laboratory of the Year
Entry Form

Completed Entries Due: February 1, 2008
The entry form below and entry materials may not be submitted over the Internet. They must be mailed to R&D Magazine, along with your $250 registration fee. You may, however, re-create the entry form in your own word-processing program to meet your design needs.

R&D Magazine invites entries to the 42^cd international Laboratory of the Year competition. The annual competition recognizes the best new and renovated laboratories that combine all aspects of the building into a superior working environment.

Due to an increasing number of innovative laboratory renovation projects and the unique design concepts that they entail, the 2008 Laboratory of the Year competition will award a separate Renovated Laboratory of the Year Award, Adaptive Re-use Award, Build-to-fit Award, along with the traditional Laboratory of the Year Award. All entries, including renovation projects, will be considered equally for the 42^cd Annual Laboratory of the Year, however, the Renovated Laboratory of the Year Award will obviously be limited to renovation projects only.

A new or renovated laboratory should have an appropriate site, an appealing architecture, and a functional arrangement that encourages innovation and communication between its scientists, engineers, technicians, and staff members. In addition, the facility should provide for the efficient use of energy, the safety of personnel and experiments, convenient ingress and egress for both humans (including handicapped) and materials, and for the humane treatment of animal test subjects.

Former winning companies have received international attention and interest from potential customers.

ELIGIBILITY

This competition is for research laboratories, quality assurance laboratories, software development facilities, and testing and standards labs. For this competition, laboratory refers to any building—wing, addition, or portion of a building—that contains one or more work areas dedicated to research, development, quality assurance, or testing and standards.
Any freestanding laboratory, major interior renovation of an existing laboratory, or laboratory as an addition to an existing building may be entered.
Laboratories completed and occupied between August 1, 2006, and December 31, 2007 may be entered.
Read "How to win a Laboratory of the Year Award"

(Note: Labs completed after July 31, 2007, may be entered in either the 2008 competition or the 2009 competition, but not in both.)

ENTRY FEE AND FORM

Entry fee: $250. Make check or purchase order payable to R&D Magazine.
Send entry fee and six (6) complete sets of the entry (see ENTRY MATERIALS REQUIRED) to: Laboratory of the Year, R&D Magazine, 25 Northwest Point Boulevard, Suite 550, Elk Grove Village, IL 60007

ENTRY MATERIALS REQUIRED

Each entry must include descriptions and photographs (color photocopies are acceptable) of research activities to be conducted in the lab, the lab design solution, safety features, and the site area. Include total cost, cost per square meter, and what is included in that cost; simple floor plans; and an explanation of outstanding features. Do not submit large blueprints. Each entry must be printed on 8.5" x 11" paper and should be stapled, bound, or otherwise held together.
Submitter's must also include one set of no less than 25 and no more than 35 digital images, supplied as duplicate low-resolution and high-resolution shots on two separate CDs (no DVDs please). PowerPoint presentations, Acrobat (.pdf) files, or Word files with embedded images are not acceptable. High-resolution images should be 300 dpi in .tif or .jpg format (.eps acceptable for line art such as floor plans); low-resolution images should be 72-dpi .jpg files.
File names should be assigned in the order you wish the images to be judged, and should include the order number, the project name, and a one-word description (i.e., 01_projectname_exterior). A separate document should provide a caption and a photographer credit for each image, keyed to the file names.

The image set should include the following: site and plot plan; floor plan or plans; at least four exterior views; interior views including work areas, six different views of laboratories, and furnishings; safety considerations, exits, and any special outstanding features. Slides must show each of the major elevations. At least one outside view should show the relationship of the new laboratory to neighboring buildings and facilities.
Written permission on letterhead must be included from each photographer or photography studio stating that all materials (slides or prints) submitted for the 2007 Laboratory of the Year application can be used in R&D Magazine or any other Advantage Business Media publication FREE OF CHARGE for any or all of the following: editorial coverage, advertising, promotional material, or any other purpose deemed necessary by R&D Magazine. Proper credit will be give to the photographer or photography studio if any images are used. Letters from the submitter are not acceptable unless the submitter owns the copyright to the image and can prove it in a written statement.
To be considered for a Renovated Laboratory of the Year Award, organizations must submit information (graphics and text) on the laboratory as it existed before the renovation, along with the information described elsewhere in this form on the renovation itself. Information on why the change was made, what challenges needed to be overcome, and how those challenges were solved should be included in the entry to assist the judging panel in their deliberations.

Note: Be sure you have provided adequate written and visual information about the lab and its mission.

Entries will not be considered without the above submission materials.

JUDGING

A jury of representatives from the architectural, scientific, and laboratory equipment communities, plus the editors of R&D Magazine, will select the laboratories that merit awards. Judges individually review each entry prior to a roundtable discussion with R&D Magazine editors. At the roundtable meeting, slides are reviewed and winners (if any) are selected.
At the discretion of the judges, one Renovated Laboratory of the Year, Adaptive Re-use, or Built-to-fit Lab of the Year Award may be selected, High Honors may be awarded to others. Special Mention awards may be made to facilities with outstanding merit in one specific category. High Honors may also be awarded. The judges may select no winners at all, if none seems worthy.

ENTRY MATERIAL AND FOLLOW-UP

Download Entry Form
Read "How to win a Laboratory of the Year Award"
Entry material and slides will not be returned. All material submitted, including pictures, may be used in R&D Magazine and other Advantage Business Media publications free of charge.
Winners only will be notified on or before February 22, 2008.
The Laboratory of the Year award presentation will take place at the 2008 Laboratory Design Conference in Houston, Texas, on April 1.
R&D Magazine reserves the right to modify or eliminate the formal presentation program.
Award recipients will be notified before publicity is sent to the media.

It must be mailed to R&D Magazine, along with your $250 registration fee. You may, however, complete the entry form online before printing. You may also download this file and prepare it in your own word-processing program.

Where are those robots?

May 9, 2008 There are roughly 78 million baby boomers in the U.S. and about 8,000 of them turn 60 every day. A small number still have parents, many of whom are in continuing care retirement facilities, which many of the baby boomers themselves will have need of in the future. A number of studies have revealed that, under current situations, there won’t be enough health care workers available in the future to properly take care of the residents in these facilities.

One of the solutions noted was the implementation of robotic systems for many of the routine chores, thereby freeing up the available health care providers to do the more personal and intensive jobs. Other robotic systems have been demonstrated for the in-home care and monitoring of elderly citizens. Health care robotic assistants’ duties include systems for delivery and disposal of materials, infirm patient guidance and tracking, rehabilitation assistants, and overall monitoring and analysis. But while many of these systems have been demonstrated, relatively few have been transitioned into actual products and integrated into health care facilities or available for in-home use.

Likely, the overall costs for the systems including their initial acquisition, maintenance, and monitoring and control networks are still beyond the payback range required by the care facility operators or individuals. Their reliability, especially in power outage situations, also has not been proven. Certainly, the looming volume of potential customers for these products is highly visible and without question, so as to create a marketplace with adequate revenue possibilities and high-volume cost reductions. Regardless, the manufacturers of such systems are not visibly increasing, and the integrations of systems into facilities is meager at best. Indeed, research in robotic health care appears to be increasing in the EU and Japan—who have their own rising levels of senior citizens—faster than it is in the U.S.

Is this going to become a situation where robotic systems needed to take care of our elderly are sourced from suppliers outside the U.S.? These are primarily high-technology products and not commodities, so that the cost advantage for foreign suppliers should not be an issue. It will become primarily a situation of who actually designs and builds these systems and offers them for sale. I sincerely hope that U.S. industry will take advantage of this opportunity to create a new market sector.

E-mail the editor

R&D Magazine’s 2008 Laboratory of the Year Entry Form

Where are those robots?

R&D Magazine’s
2008 Laboratory of the Year
Entry Form