CDC Selects Construction Manager to Build High-Containment Continuity Lab

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has selected McCarthy Building Companies, Inc. as construction manager and constructor for a new high-containment continuity laboratory at the Roybal Campus in Atlanta, Georgia. The new facility is part of CDC’s 2025 Masterplan that was finalized well before COVID-19.

The new 160,000-square-foot, multistory research building will increase the CDC’s research capacity to sustain its diagnostic mission and support its public health mission by helping communities prepare for, detect and respond to consequences of all public health hazards. The HCCL building will be a Biosafety Level-4 facility, a designation reserved for the highest level of biological safety, and it will accommodate approximately 80 laboratory researchers.

The new facility is in the preconstruction/design phase, with construction planned to begin in early 2021. Post-completion, the HCCL will be one of three facilities in the world designed and certified to facilitate diagnostic research on specific, select viruses.

As a BSL-4 laboratory, the new facility will feature high-efficiency particulate air-filtered supply and exhaust air, air pressure-resistant doors, pressure-cascade zoning, effluent collection and treatment and pressure-decay-tested coatings and penetrations, as well as high-purity breathing air and chemical decontamination showers for research staff. In addition, there will be connections to the existing Roybal campus utility systems with below-grade utility tunnels and a two-level bridge connection.

The CDC has selected Flad Architects, Page Southerland Page and WSP to plan, program and design the HCCL.