Technical Assessment of the Capital Facility Needs of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (2023) / Chapter Skim
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3 Existing Facilities at Boulder, Colorado, and Gaithersburg, Maryland, Campuses and Their Current Challenges
3 Existing Facilities at Boulder, Colorado, and Gaithersburg, Maryland, Campuses and Their Current Challenges
Pages 29-46
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From page 29... ...
3 Gross square feet is the area of all floors on all levels of a building as determined using an industry standard such as ANSI/BOMA Z65.3 20096, Gross Area of a Building or IFMA/ASTM E1836-01, Standard Classification for Building Floor Area Measurements for Facility Management. 4 Robert Vaughn, NIST CFMO, and director, OFPM, email, OFPM's Condition Assessment Report 4th Qtr.
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. 8 Guidance for Real Property Inventory Reporting, Federal Real Property Council, Version 1, May 20, 2021.
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When the Gaithersburg and Boulder campuses are considered together, 63 percent of the research facilities and 69 percent of the non-research facilities fail to meet the DOC established FCI/CI standard for acceptable building condition. Finding 3-1: Using the metrics and standards established by DOC in its Real Property Manual, the major ity of NIST facilities including its mission critical laboratories fail to meet establish the acceptable building condition goal.
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FY 2021, sent by email from Robert Vaughn, NIST chief facilities management officer, and director, OFPM, June 20, 2022. An assessment of NIST laboratory facilities was conducted through site surveys and analysis of design and upgrades documentation.
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Laboratory Facilities The committee's site visits and interaction with laboratory personnel at the sites indicate that many research facilities are not suitable to the measurement science research that is the essence of what NIST does. The laboratory facilities that have not been renovated suffer from a wide range of issues that include unreliable power, instrument FIGURE 3-3 Photo of corroded fitting hot water heating riser in Building 101.
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The researchers assert that this demonstration could never have been done in their original laboratory in the unrenovated Wing 1 and that, if their efforts had begun in a laboratory renovated to Wing 3 building standards, they would have achieved this groundbreaking result 18 months earlier. This 18-month delay in a critical advance in quantum science and engineering, a national priority since 2010, is directly attributed to poor facility condition and functionality and is indicative of the challenges NIST researchers face in a global race for scientific superiority.
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$2.5 Million in Lost Equipment Causing Delays in Research Supporting Semiconductor Fabrication The semiconductor industry is of critical importance to the United States, and NIST has a long history of supporting industry needs. The nanoscale reliability laboratory in Boulder performs research to understand, mitigate, and ideally eliminate defects that undermine the reliability of semiconductor devices, additive manufacturing parts, and structural materials by using electron microscopes capable of the nanoscale resolutions required for such 10 See, for example, Are Our Bridges Safe?
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, built in 2004, adequately provides this required stability, the building's recirculating hot water hydronic system fitting failed due to corrosion and resultant flooding resulted in the total loss of sophisticated laboratory instrumentation worth $5.2 million. Figure 3-4 shows the corrosion.
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Figure 3-5 shows the balance post-incident. Facilities Impacts on Measurement Services Delivery Each year NIST sells 32,000 Standard Reference Materials, performs 13,000 calibrations and tests, and supports 800 accreditations of testing and calibration services.
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Unfortunately, this unrenovated laboratory is in Boulder's 1950s-era Building 1 where the building systems do not provide humidity control and offer only limited temperature control. Because calibrations can only be performed under specified laboratory temperature and humidity ranges, calibrations are cancelled about two times per month because the laboratory environment is out of range.
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that provides 0.1-degree temperature stability, and the measurement apparatus is further contained within a temperature-controlled enclosure that improves the temperature stability by an additional factor of 100. Despite these extraordinary temperature controls, the lack of humidity control results in extended periods during which the measurement system cannot be used due to low humidity.
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Yet NIST OFPM estimates that 86 percent of the technical staff (ZP and ZT12 and technical associates) are working in laboratory facilities that are in poor or critical condition.13 The NIST technical staff assigned to older spaces routinely find their attention drawn away from the measurement science mission and toward resolving deficiencies within their laboratories.
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The committee observed many staff-invented workarounds and fixes to improve temperature control, humidity control, cleanliness, and other laboratory defects. While innovative, this very inefficient and costly use of technical talent is now considered normal among NIST researchers.
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Central Utility Plant and Distribution Lines A CUP produces and distributes the steam, chilled water, and compressed air essential to the operations of the buildings. Each campus has emergency generators to ensure continued operations at the CUP, but OFPM does not provide backup generators for laboratory operations.
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Conclusion 3-4: The inadequacies of the CUPs and the utility and service distribution on the campus has led to delays and failures in meeting the NIST research mission, non-compliance with environmental regulations, and national priorities. 14 Robert Vaughn, NIST chief facilities management officer, and director of OFPM, "Technical Assessment of the Capital Facility Needs of the National Institute of Standards and Technology," presentation to the committee on February 15 and 16, 2022.
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Boulder The Boulder campus laboratories are plagued by intermittent power outages and glitches that reportedly occur about 12 times per year, causing delays and damage well beyond the few minutes of power interruption. In addition to lost data, power glitches often require a substantial effort to restart equipment, restore the necessary experimental conditions, and reset the experiment; researchers in the NIST spintronics group reported wasting 15 percent of its staff time each year to these issues.
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From page 45... ...
These include: • Substantive delays in key national security deliverables due to inadequate facility performance; • Substantive delays in national technology priorities -- such as quantum science, engineering biology, and advanced manufacturing -- due to inadequate facility performance or facility failures; • Inability to advance research related to national technology priorities due to limitations imposed by inadequate facilities performance; • Material delays in NIST measurement service provision to U.S. industry customers due to inadequate facility performance or facility failures; and • Serious damage, or complete destruction, of highly specialized and costly equipment due to periodic catastrophic facility failures.
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2020. "Federal Real Property Council 2020 Guidance for Real Property Inventory Reporting." Version 2.
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