tunnels connected to police headquarters, so it had to function within its own
context, but also within the context of
the site.
The facility is both beautiful and
functional: JE Dunn’s construction
team helped display the dramatic
sculptures hanging in the atrium by
California artist Cliff Garten. The “
Bullet” in the central atrium represents the
physical marking of a material shot by
a gun, and the “Suspect” in the north
atrium displays two inverted, lighted
DNA strands.
Because of the Denver project’s
complexity, JE Dunn was fortunate to
spend an extended amount of time
in the pre-construction phase of the
project, meeting with SmithGroupJJR,
the architectural design team, as well as
crime lab directors, department heads
and employees. It was such a collaborative process that forensic scientists at the
lab could understand lab casework shop
drawings by the end of the shop drawing
review session.
Working closely with the Denver
facility’s end users helped JE Dunn develop creative solutions to some of the
unique challenges of crime labs, such
as how to allow forensic photographers
get aerial views of evidence and crime
scene reconstructions. The solution: An
elevated catwalk across the room that
gives the photographers a bird’s-eye view
of their surroundings with a removable
section of grating so they could shoot
straight down.
The lab staff also wanted the ability to
fume an entire car at once for fingerprints. So when the team converted the
city’s former secured prisoner entryway into a three-bay forensics garage,
meetings were held with the owner to
create a system. As there are no fuming
tents on the market, the team converted
a portable paint tent to meet the requirements for fuming operations—hitting
80% humidity and 80 F. The area has a
separate mechanical system to get the
tent to those specifications.
The firearms library was also problematic, because the Denver Police Dept. had
many guns collected into evidence. They
needed to store the guns in a relatively
small space, but also needed to view the
profile of guns while they were still hanging. To meet this need, the team created
high-density storage using a panel system
with slot walls and specialized mounts
for the guns.
The team worked with an acoustics
contractor—Troy Acoustics—that helped
design a quiet and safe firing range in
the basement of the facility. And the
team installed the contractor’s patented
wall material, the Troy System, which is
comprised of Portland cement cementitious wood fiber board with mineral
wool behind it. The dense mineral wool
absorbs both low and high sounds, which
is critical to prevent reverberation. It
not only provides safety for the shooter,
but also minimizes noise transmission
to adjacent spaces. The team added
laminated drywall and insulation to the
12-in concrete slab ceiling to minimize
sound transmission to the next floor. The
team also added half-inch steel plates to
the ceiling to prevent bullets from going
up, and solid grouted masonry and solid
concrete walls on the sides and end to
ensure bullets stayed in the firing range.
After talks with lab employees, the coun-tertops were raised in the fingerprint labs to
make the environment more comfortable for
technicians bending over to view samples.
Separate office areas for lab scientists were
also built, so they could do paperwork away
from the lab area.
Also, fairly unique to crime labs is the
use of hydrogen gas. The team first installed
valves used for the transmission of other
gases, but those leaked, so the team installed
valves designed specifically for the transmission of hydrogen gas.
NEBRASKA CRIME LAB
Another collaborative, complex project
we worked on was the conversion of a
former hangar at Offut Air Force Base in
Nebraska to a forensics lab for Joint POW/
MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), which
was completed in 2013. JPAC conducts the
important work of global search, recovery
and lab operations for American POWs
and MIAs from past wars. The federal
project for JPAC entailed about 40,000 sf
for lab and analysis work, evidence and record storage and administrative space. The
project helped JPAC meet a Congressional
mandate to identify 200 remains per year,
beginning in 2015.
Not all projects, however, have the luxury of a lengthy and highly collaborative
pre-construction process. The 132,000-sf,
multiple-building East campus project
under construction for the Kansas City
Police Dept., which includes a 67,000-sf
forensic lab, had a short pre-construction
period and significant budget constraints. It required the team to evaluate
Latent print lab at the Denver Police Crime Lab.
Image: Photography © Frank Ooms
Main forensic trace lab at the Denver Police Crime Lab.
Image: Photography © Frank Ooms
Exterior view of the northeast corner of the Denver Crime
Laboratory. Image: Photography © Frank Ooms
This firing range features panels of cementitious
wood fiber board with mineral wool behind it. This
system prevents reverberation and allows for ease of
replacement and maintenance.
Image: Photography © Frank Ooms
