UK Life Sciences and Innovation Real Estate Annual Conference 

Members of the architecture, engineering, real estate, construction, biotech, and healthcare industries gathered for the annual UK Life Sciences & Innovation Real Estate Conference on Thursday, 20th March at the ILEC Conference Centre, on a wonderfully warm day in West London. Senior Design Manager Scarlett Petchey and Design Manager Haziq Khairi attended the event and spent the day absorbing a series of insightful panel discussions whilst connecting with industry colleagues new and old.

The morning began with a panel moderated by Sue Foxley on ‘Financing Life Sciences and Securing Capital’, in which the adaptability and variety of Life Sciences development was highlighted as a vital way to attract and retain both financial and human capital. Risk mitigation was also a key takeaway; for example, by involving key disciplines such as M&E early in the design programme.

As more Life Sciences companies also embrace emergent technologies such as AI, this adaptability is becoming ever more important, as underlined by Matthew Ollier, Jane Hutchins, Mairi Dillon, Vipul Bhakta, and Tim Fry in the following panel ‘Tech Integration in Life Sciences.’ Sustainability was an overarching topic throughout the day and was spotlighted in the third discussion ‘ESG and Sustainability in Life Sciences: A New Frontier.’ HDR’s Sally Lee presented an effective set of diagrams illustrating HDR’s approach to optimised ventilation strategies in laboratories.

The afternoon saw discussions turn towards the future: Future-proofing of Life Sciences facilities was considered in the panel ‘Built for Science: Collaborative Approaches to Developing Life Sciences Facilities’, whilst sector expansion into new regions and continued collaboration with academia were at the centre of ‘Creating the Next Life Sciences Powerhouse: Location, Talent, Growth.’

The takeaways from the day were clear in the themes underpinning the future of Life Sciences – the promotion and celebration of the UK’s Oxford-Cambridge-London ‘Golden Triangle’, as well as burgeoning clusters in Manchester, Edinburgh, and Stevenage; the need to develop holistic Life Science spaces for both research and living; and the importance of assembling a specialist Design Team to design and deliver these ambitious projects.

We are very much looking forward to continuing the fruitful discussions held with various industry colleagues on the day.