It took a lot of toing and froing before a decision was taken. In the summer of 2021, the FHML board hears for the first time of the possibilities of renovating the current CPV. “We were told from the very beginning that it was not possible,” said the then vice dean Nanne de Vries later in the faculty council meeting.
An attractive alternative: the cost of a newly built so-called biomedical centre (BMC), for which plans already existed (see textbox) for more than ten years, have since then doubled compared to the originally budgeted 22 million euro. The board decided to investigate whether a renovated CPV could meet all conditions. “We are not going to work with less here,” said board member at the time, Jos Prickaerts to Observant. “We start from the premise that the set of requirements for the BMC is adopted in full. We are now looking into that: is it feasible in terms of functionality and technically, and what are the costs?”
Opportunity
The fact that UNS 50 is being renovated anyway and that hybrid working emerged because of the Covid-19 pandemic, eventually proved to provide an opportunity, says FHML dean Annemie Schols now. “When I was still a director at the NUTRIM research institute, the board assumed that we needed more office spaces and fewer laboratories. During the pandemic we realised that it was actually the research infrastructure that enticed people to come to the campus. We have the whole line: from microscopic lab work to clinical research in MUMC+. The animal testing facilities fit in very well with those. UNS 50 should be regarded as the new biomedical centre; everything is already here.”
The presence of the other labs – for example SCRUM, the new Stem celll Research Unit Maastricht, and the advanced imaging infrastructure of M4I – makes it easier to meet the plan of requirement for the CPV. Those renovations make it feasible to apply new techniques, like for ventilation. The CPV – which is now housed in the basement and part of the ground floor of UNS 50 – will form a kind of column over part of the first four floors of the building. “Close to the other labs. This means that transportation (outside, ed.) of material can be avoided as much as possible.”
Multiple functions
Prickaerts expected at the time that the feasibility study would be completed in the first months of 2022 and that a decision could be taken. That took longer. “That is the way things go sometimes,” says Schols. “We really wanted to investigate in detail how we could free up some room and where everything could go. All the needs – such as specialised equipment – of researchers will be provided for in this plan.” Along with that, the renovation of UNS 50 is already a logistic puzzle and now this renovation has to be fitted in as well. “This has been done successfully and everyone can continue to work, so we won’t need any temporary buildings.”
According to Schols, an additional advantage of the decision, is the fact that the animal testing facility will remain in a building that is already multifunctional. “Where possible, researchers already use alternatives, but at the moment animal testing is still necessary. Should that diminish over the next fifteen years, we can use these spaces for something else, for example, by adding them to another lab on the same floor.”
Over the next few months, the Board will further complete the details with employees and researchers from the CPV. Schols expects that this process will be completed in the course of 2023. The refurbished spaces could be ready for use in phases in 2025.