Facility Management, Maintenance and Operation Core

Project Summary: The BSL3 suites in the Rocky Mountain Regional Biocontainment Laboratory (RMRBL) at Colorado State University (CSU) have been operational and at capacity since being commissioned. These facilities support research in response to new threats from established pathogens, such as Mycobacterium spp. (tuberculosis, leprosy, and emerging diseases caused by non-tuberculosis mycobacteria) and high consequence, select agent pathogens, such as Eastern Equine Encephalitis Virus, Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis, Francisella tularensis, and Burkholderia pseudomallei. The RMRBL BSL3 is required to pivot and rapidly respond to new, emerging pathogens with pandemic potential. The RMRBL has been exemplary, researching new threats such as MERS-CoV, MPox, and SARS-CoV-2. The RMRBL BSL3 thus represents the backbone of research capabilities in infectious disease at CSU. CSU, in turn has supported the facility for the past 15 years. CSU's support includes much of the day-to-day operating costs of the RMRBL BSL3 facilities; remaining costs are covered by assessing user fees to CSU researchers based on square footage and entries. Expenses beyond day-to-day operational costs, including non-annual facilities repairs and replacement upgrades require additional advocating and are addressed when eminently needed. This disrupts crucial operations. Work within the BSL3 comes with a sacrifice to personal comfort due to the requirements for biosafety and biosecurity, along with the inherent risk of work on high consequence pathogens. Maintaining safe, operational and appropriate scientific instruments is challenged as servicing these instruments is difficult and frequently results in the need to replace equipment. The consequence of the cost, work environment, deprecating equipment and operational disruptions is our inability to maintain a trained workforce and sufficiently technically equipped BSL3 'warm ready' space. In response to this challenge, we propose our Core 1 - Facility Management, Maintenance & Operations. This core is strategically designed to resolve many of the RMRBL BSL3 challenges through three functional aims; Aim 1 - Management, will improve upon the current structure for communication across research and support teams; Aim 2 - Maintenance, will maintain the RMRBL BSL3 facilities functionality through proactive preventative maintenance, reducing unplanned disruptions; and finally, Aim 3 - Operations, will institute dedicated operational and animal husbandry support and improve IT-communications within the RMRBL BSL3/ABSL3. Our comprehensive approach to improving the management, maintenance, and operations of the RMRBL BSL3 will result in an improved RMRBL BSL3 system that exemplifies communication and collaboration across our diverse leadership and research teams in a biosafe and bio-secure compliant environment. As a result, the penultimate goal of this core - to perpetuate warm ready RMRBL BSL3 facilities; compliant with the dynamic requirements for biosafety and biosecurity, appropriately resourced, and responsive to our national and state RBL mission - will be achieved.