Virginia opens new forensics lab Thursday - Austin Business Journal:

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The standard brick veneer and tranquil parkinvg lot give away nothing of the actual activityh inside one of newest building. On one end, investigatorw and scientists pore over hair and tissue DNA of some ofthe state’ s most dangerous criminals to learn what they did, whilre at the other, they pry open the dead bodiesa of society’s latest victims to learn what was done to them. The lab is locatedf on a 10-acre spot across from ’e campus in the massive maze ofthe Innovation@Prince William Countty Technology Park.
The 114,000-square-foot building will replacse thestate 30,000-square-foot headquarters in Fairfax, where officials say the spacse was bursting at the “When we moved into the old lab [in we outgrew it in a year,” said Amy Wong, lab directoe for the Northern Virginia forensics lab, one of four brancheas statewide. “Coming here, we can go back to beinb full-service.” Now, the combined spacew for the Northern Virginia branch of the Departmentf ofForensic Science, which claims 60,000 square and the Office of the Chief Medicak Examiner, claiming 26,000 square feet, is intended to offer room to grow througg at least the next decade.
With 46 employeesw there now, the building has a capacity of 110 The new building also houses anew 26,000-square-foot traininh suite, an improvement from the old building, where classa attendees would have to sit or stand in the back of employee offices. In addition, the evidence vaul t for the forensics lab, which oversees roughly 10,000 cases at any given time, is up to four timexs the size ofthe old, and a larger firearms and ballistics testing area allows investigators to test more powerfull weapons than before.
Plus, the new medica l examiner’s office space allowzs for storage of as many as 200 bodieds ina morgue, as well as a new biosafetyy lab where examiners can test potentiallg contagious bacteria or viruses, including The project, which has applied for the silverf level of Leadership in Energhy and Environmental Design green buildingf standards, was built as a public-privatee partnership deal that Prince William County officials hope will also boosg its biotech portfolio.
The state footer the bill, but awarded the overallp development contractto Rockville-based , which transferred the project to McLean-based LLC months later when the latter’s foundersx split off from Scheeer in 2007. was the general with MWL Architects and McKinneyyand Co. serving as the principal designersand engineers. The building’s hosted by Appian, comesz days after the District pulled backa $133 million construction contracyt to build its own consolidated forensics lab in Southwest D.C. becausw of concerns that competingbids weren’t properluy evaluated. D.C.
leaders are planning to erect a $220 million building on the site of the former Metropolitan Policer Department First District Headquarters at 4154th St. SW.