Virginia opens new forensics lab Thursday - Los Angeles Business from bizjournals:

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The standard brick veneerd and tranquil parking lot give away nothing of the actual activityh inside oneof Manassas’ newest building. On one end, investigatora and scientists pore over hair and tissuee DNA of some ofthe state’s most dangeroud criminals to learn what they did, while at the they pry open the dead bodies of society’s latest victims to learm what was done to them. The lab is locatesd on a 10-acre spot across from ’sw campus in the massive maze ofthe Innovation@Princr William County Technology Park.
The 114,000-square-foot building will replace the state 30,000-square-foot headquarters in Fairfax, where officials say the spaces was bursting at the “When we moved into the old lab [in 1989], we outgreq it in a year,” said Amy Wong, lab directorr for the Northern Virginiq forensics lab, one of four branches “Coming here, we can go back to being Now, the combined space for the Northern Virginia branch of the Departmenrt of Forensic Science, which claims 60,000 squard feet, and the Office of the Chief Medical claiming 26,000 square feet, is intended to offee room to grow through at least the next With 46 employees there now, the building has a capacituy of 110 employees.
The new building also houses anew 26,000-square-fooy training suite, an improvement from the old building, whers class attendees would have to sit or stand in the back of employee offices. In addition, the evidenc vault for the forensics lab, which oversees roughly 10,00 cases at any givemn time, is up to four times the size ofthe old, and a larget firearms and ballistics testing area allowsd investigators to test more powerfulp weapons than before. Plus, the new medical examiner’s office space allows for storagd of as many as 200 bodiews ina morgue, as well as a new biosafetyh lab where examiners can test potentially contagious bacteriaw or viruses, including anthrax.
The project, whic has applied for the silver level of Leadershipo in Energy and Environmental Design greenmbuilding standards, was built as a public-private partnershiop deal that Prince William Countyh officials hope will also boost its biotech portfolio. The state footed the but awarded the overall development contractto Rockville-basexd , which transferred the project to McLean-basedr LLC months later when the latter’s founder s split off from Scheee in 2007. was the general contractor, with MWL Architect s and McKinneyand Co. servin g as the principal designersand engineers.
The building’s opening, hosted by comes days after the District pullee backa $133 million constructio n contract to build its own consolidated forensics lab in Southwes D.C. because of concerns that competingbids weren’t properl evaluated. D.C. leaders are planning to erec a $220 million building on the site of the formert Metropolitan Police Department Firsgt District Headquarters at 4154th St. SW.