On October 25, 2021, the Department of Energy recognized the completion of the Integrative Genomics Building (IGB) with a 2020 Project Management Achievement Award. According to the IGB project management award citation, project managers oversaw the completion of the building ahead of schedule and on budget in a highly competitive construction environment.
“During the period of design and bidding, the San Francisco Bay Area experienced a construction boom, and became one of the most expensive places to build,” the award citation says. The project team instituted a “value engineering” approach to reduce the scope and thus costs of the project, bringing it back within budget without sacrificing scientific function.
The IGB is home to the Joint Genome Institute, the DOE Systems Biology Knowledgebase (KBase), and the National Microbiome Data Collaborative (NMDC). Their collocation creates a thriving research ecosystem for inspiring innovations, from optimizing the production of sustainable biofuel feedstocks, to developing methods for elucidating plant-microbe interactions regulating the dynamic exchange of nutrients in soil, and predicting the impact of climate change on biogeochemical processes controlling the flux of greenhouse gases.
Among the distinguishing features of the IGB is its energy efficiency, 31 percent better than the ASHRAE standard baseline. The IGB also complied with the guiding principles of high-performance sustainable buildings requirements and achieved US Green Building Council LEED Gold certification.
During the award ceremony, Berkeley Lab’s new Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) was also recognized with a 2020 Project Management Excellence Award. Learn more about the IGB in this Berkeley Lab story.
