Navigating Growth: Insights from our life sciences roundtable

Driven by the relentless pursuit of innovation, life science companies often experience intense periods of growth. We recently brought together a group from the industry to share strategies and experiences in three key areas:

– Fostering growth
– Overcoming obstacles to growth
– The rise of shared spaces and collaboration

At MovePlan, we believe in actively sharing our expertise and insight with our network. With this in mind, we wanted to share the insights from the event with some practical advice for navigating growth in the life science sector.

Boston University’s Center for Computing & Data Sciences: a sustainable relocation project for MovePlan

Boston University’s Center for Computing & Data Sciences in Boston, Massachusetts, is a 19-storey building designed by KPMB Architects and is the most environmentally friendly building in the city.

While its exterior design has generated many of the headlines, it is its environmental credentials which will see it lead the way in building sustainability. At 350,000 square feet, it is the largest carbon-neutral building in Boston, free of fossil fuels, and relying on geothermal wells for heating and cooling. External shading and triple-glazed glass windows minimise energy consumption and the building’s electricity is matched with renewable energy generated from BU Wind, a power purchase agreement with a wind farm in South Dakota.

Relocating four faculties into one new building

MovePlan was the University’s move partner, chosen to relocate a number of disparate departments into one new building: the Faculty of Computing & Data Science, Computer Science, Mathematics and Statistics, and the Hariri Institute. With the new building seeking to place collaboration at the heart of its design, several aspects, such as whiteboard walls to encourage ideation, small gathering spaces to encourage conversations and a central atrium running the entire length of the building featuring platforms intended for group working, meant that many ways of working had to be revised.

Moving a lab is no mean feat, just ask anyone who has ever been through a lab move. In fact, we did just that!

Sarah Speroff, Workplace Project Director, based in Seattle, and Molly Frazier, Senior Workplace Project Manager in San Francisco, share their insight into what it takes to successfully relocate a laboratory. From the months of planning, to building trust with lab users, and all the communication in between, Sarah and Molly provide the inside track – and with over 15 clients and 75+ individual laboratory moves between them, they are the right people to do so.

The evolving workplace was the topic of a roundtable event held by MovePlan’s Canadian Project Director, Michelle Brown. 

Those in attendance heard from our guest speaker, Brian Aman, a Senior Partner with Rogers Communications. He shared how we have an opportunity to evolve the workplace post-pandemic, including how and where work is done.

MovePlan has recently opened an office to support our clients in Seattle. We were keen to host a networking roundtable event to learn more about the local market and make meaningful connections.