What to Figure Out Before Your Next Facility Expansion

The decisions that shape your expansion happen before architects or vendors ever get involved.

Facility expansions tend to follow a familiar pattern: someone identifies the need for more capacity, leadership approves a budget, and the team starts calling vendors for quotes. It feels like the right sequence, but without clearly defined requirements, those vendor conversations often circle without resolution. Scope drifts as the project progresses. Equipment arrives that doesn't fit the space or overwhelms the electrical system.

The expansions that go smoothly generally have something in common. The internal team spent time figuring out what they actually needed before engaging anyone external. Not "more capacity" as a general goal, but specific answers to specific questions: how many additional storage units, on what timeline, under which regulatory framework, with what level of redundancy. That kind of clarity makes every subsequent conversation more productive.

The building has opinions

It's easy to think of a building as empty space waiting to be filled, but every structure has physical constraints that become expensive when ignored.

Floors have weight limits, and office buildings are designed for desks and people rather than rows of heavy equipment. High-density cold storage can exceed what the slab was engineered to support. Electrical capacity is similarly finite, and lab equipment doesn't draw power smoothly. When compressors start, they can pull several times their running current for a few seconds, which means doubling your equipment count may require more than double the electrical service to handle simultaneous startups after a power interruption.

Heat load is the constraint that tends to surprise people most. A room full of ultra-low freezers isn't cold from the building's perspective. The equipment maintains cold temperatures inside the cabinets by continuously pumping heat into the surrounding space. If the HVAC system can't remove that heat fast enough, room temperatures rise, which forces the freezers to work harder, which generates more heat. Freezer rooms without adequate cooling capacity can reach problematic temperatures relatively quickly.

Compliance and workflow are the same conversation

For regulated facilities, compliance isn't something you layer on after the space is designed. The regulations themselves dictate much of the layout.

FDA rules for plasma facilities require physical separation between different activities. Donor screening areas need privacy. Collection spaces need isolation from unrelated operations. Storage and quarantine require distinct locations, not just different labels on the same shelf. The path that materials travel through your facility has to make sense from a contamination control standpoint, and that's difficult to retrofit once walls are in place.

The regulatory requirements extend beyond construction, too. Equipment needs to be qualified and processes validated before operations can begin, which represents weeks of work after the last contractor leaves. If you're moving existing equipment as part of the expansion, validation requirements typically follow the equipment to its new location.

The details that tend to get overlooked

Some of the issues that derail projects are fairly mundane. Delivery paths, for instance. Large equipment needs to travel from the loading dock to its final location, and it's worth measuring doorways, corridors, and corners before placing orders. Network connectivity is another common gap. Power outlets get planned carefully, but modern equipment often needs data connections for monitoring, and adding network infrastructure to finished spaces is disruptive.

Waste handling deserves more attention than it usually receives. Regulated facilities generate regulated waste, and the path for removing it should be part of the original plan rather than something improvised later. And capacity margins matter. Facilities tend to fill up faster than initial projections suggest, so building in some excess capacity during the first expansion is generally more economical than returning for a second one a few years later.

Thorough planning doesn't guarantee a trouble-free project, but it does tend to keep things closer to budget and schedule while producing space that actually serves the operation well.

If you're working through an expansion and would find it helpful to talk through some of these considerations, feel free to reach out to our team.