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Don’t try this at home
If moving apartments or homes seems burdensome, consider John Vieno’s task: moving 40 scientists and all of their fragile and expensive laboratory equipment into the Life Science and Engineering building as quickly and safely as possible. For Vieno, who recently moved 85 laboratories into a new research building at Children’s Hospital in six weeks, the BU job is par for the course.
The first moves began on April 4, but Vieno has been planning the operation with Paul Rinaldi, director of space management, for over a year. About two weeks before a researcher’s scheduled day, Vieno, who is president of A&A, a company specializing in relocating laboratories, meets with all members of the laboratory to walk them through the procedure. “We preach purging,” he says. “This is a great time for them to get rid of stuff they don’t need to take with them.”
Laboratory personnel pack their own items, such as test tubes, beakers, and other glassware, into boxes, which a general moving company ferries to the new lab space. But there are a lot of things in a laboratory that regular movers aren’t trained to handle, says Larry Valles, biology department laboratory manager. All of the dry and wet chemicals, for instance, are packed into special containers by a chemical moving company.
The various microscopes, cameras, ultracentrifuges, lasers, computer servers, and other delicate equipment need to be taken apart by specialized technicians, packed in boxes, and reassembled in the new building. The biology department’s $800,000 electron microscope, previously located at 44 Cummington St., is a special case. It requires one subcontractor to disassemble it, and then another vendor, called a rigger, to move the oversized and heavy equipment to its new site, where it’s reassembled by the first specialist.
Another challenge for the biology department is moving several supercold freezers (minus 80 degrees Celsius) used for long-term storage of experimental specimens. Some researchers, such as Geoffrey Cooper, a CAS biology professor and department chairman, have specimens and reagents from experiments dating back to the 1970s. The freezers are a cryogenic record of several decades of research, and they need to remain very cold, which means that they cannot be unplugged for more than 20 minutes en route. Movers pack the freezers with paper to stabilize their contents, keeping the doors open for only a few seconds at a time, and quickly wheel them to their new location.
Vieno was born into the moving business. His father moved households in Massachusetts for 43 years, but young John was “more into the paperwork than lifting furniture,” he says. He managed moving companies for 20 years before launching his own business 5 years ago. Having orchestrated major moves for Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and high-tech companies in Boston, he doesn’t plan to ever return to domestic moving. “I’m sticking with lab research from here on out,” he says.
Life Science and Engineering building: “cathedral to science”
29
April 2005
Boston University
Office of University Relations