Marking a ‘high’ point in expansion of medical research and education

From afar, someone might see a tree on top of a construction site and wonder, “What’s that doing there?” The tree signifies a construction industry tradition, marking an end of the structural phase and the placement of the highest piece of material. On February 2, Vaughn Construction hosted a ‘topping out’ ceremony for its employees and Texas A&M University officials at the Texas A&M College of Medicine’s Medical Research and Education Building 2 project site.

The building project entails a vertical expansion of the existing Medical Research and Education Building Annex and a new four-story connected building, Medical Research and Education Building 2. The 172,000 square-foot project expansion includes a 200-seat teaching lab, lab core facilities, offices and support facilities. Also, the existing biosafety level 3 suite is being expanded into the third floor of the new building.

The building will include movable casework, flexible partitions and mobile workstations to enable a continuous evolution as user needs require. Keeping multidisciplinary collaboration in mind, intersections at the core of each level enable congregation among researchers, students and staff.

The new facilities are a strategic response to the growth of the institution. State-of-the-art laboratories are being built for evolving research activities. Core lab functions will support biomedical and physiology-based research well into the future. As construction continues with interior build-out and installation of the building skin, the Health Science Center looks forward to celebrating the building’s completion next year.