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Kirksey was contracted by the Department of Public Safety through the Texas Facilities Commission to design a regional headquarter crime laboratory for the Houston area. The crime lab project is approximately 40,000 sf of new construction, replacing an existing facility on the headquarter’s campus. The new, tilt-wall crime lab was designed around state-of-the-art DNA analysis, fire arms analysis, drug analysis, trace evidence analysis and evidence holding procedures and technologies. The laboratory houses its science and lab technicians in an open-office environment and incorporates design strategies meant to encourage collaboration between related disciplines. A tilt-wall structure was chosen because of its efficiency and cost even though it was a departure from the owner’s perspective to house a lab facility.