The question of Wet Lab vs Dry Lab: How Requirements Differ When Selecting a Building is one that surfaces early in every life sciences and technology real estate search, yet it rarely receives the structured evaluation it demands. The two lab categories share a name but diverge sharply on infrastructure, code compliance, landlord capability, and long-term cost — meaning a scoring matrix built for one will mislead a team pursuing the other.
Why the Distinction Matters Before You Tour a Single Building
A dry lab is, at its core, a high-density computing and data environment. It requires exceptional power density, structured cabling, cooling capacity for server racks, and acoustic separation, but it has minimal plumbing beyond standard office fixtures and no chemical exhaust requirements.
A wet lab is an entirely different physical proposition. It requires specialized plumbing for deionized water and acid waste, chemical exhaust systems, fume hoods connected to dedicated exhaust shafts, biosafety cabinetry, and in many configurations, emergency eyewash and shower infrastructure tied to specific drainage pathways.
Confusing these two categories — or assuming a building can easily convert between them — produces costly errors during due diligence. A team that tours a building without first locking down its lab type will waste time evaluating infrastructure that is irrelevant to its actual program.
The classification also affects lease structure. Wet lab tenants typically negotiate for landlord-funded base building improvements, tenant improvement allowances calibrated to plumbing and exhaust rough-in work, and longer lease terms to amortize that capital. Dry lab tenants often find shorter terms more achievable because the fit-out is less embedded in the structure.
Defining the Core Infrastructure Footprint for Each Lab Type
For a wet lab, the base building must provide adequate floor-to-floor height to accommodate a full mechanical plenum. A finished ceiling of ten feet, while acceptable for office use, is rarely sufficient once you account for supply air ductwork, exhaust shafts, sprinkler distribution, and structural coordination for equipment loads.
Wet labs also demand robust drainage. Standard office-grade plumbing cannot handle acid waste, biological effluent, or the high-volume drainage rates produced by autoclaves and glasswashers. The building's drainage system must include neutralization sumps or acid waste piping in separate runs from standard sanitary systems, depending on the nature of the science being conducted.
Dry labs are demanding in a different direction. Power density in a dry lab environment can reach thirty to sixty watts per square foot in compute-heavy configurations, against a typical office build-out of eight to twelve watts per square foot. The building's electrical infrastructure — transformer capacity, panel sizing, UPS provisions, and generator backup — must be evaluated against the actual load profile of the occupying team's compute program.
Cooling in a dry lab is principally a consequence of power density. High-performance computing generates heat proportional to its power draw, and standard HVAC systems designed for human comfort are inadequate. Precision cooling units, in-row cooling, or chilled water loops serving the compute areas must be evaluated as a base building capability or priced as a tenant-funded improvement.
Understanding these divergent footprints is the foundation of responsible facility-planning for any life sciences or technology occupier. A requirements brief that conflates the two categories will produce shortlists that cannot be directly compared.
How to Build a Requirements Brief That Separates the Two Categories
The requirements brief is the governing document for the entire site selection process. For a life sciences tenant, the brief must specify whether the program calls for benched wet lab science, computational research, or a hybrid configuration that allocates distinct zones to each function.
For wet lab programs, the brief should quantify fume hood density, the number of benched linear feet required, biosafety level classification if applicable, autoclave count and location, cold room and freezer farm provisions, and chemical storage requirements. Each of these elements has a direct structural or mechanical consequence that the building must either already provide or be capable of accommodating through capital improvement.
For dry lab programs, the brief must specify maximum power draw per rack, total rack count, cooling architecture preference, redundancy requirements including generator and UPS runtime, fiber pathway requirements for network connectivity, and acoustic separation standards between compute rooms and collaboration spaces.
A hybrid program — increasingly common in translational research organizations where computational biology sits alongside bench science — requires the brief to map which portions of the floor plate carry which loads. The document should also identify which zones must be capable of independent access control, biosafety separation, and utility metering, because those requirements affect both design and lease structure.
A well-constructed requirements brief allows the site selection team to evaluate every candidate building against a consistent standard. Without it, tour observations accumulate as impressions rather than evidence, and the decision-making process becomes susceptible to the influence of the most recently visited building rather than the best-fit option.
Structural and Floor Loading Considerations
Autoclaves, centrifuges, and large analytical instruments can produce concentrated loads that require structural reinforcement, additional columns, or transfer beams that are expensive to retrofit. A structural review of the target floors should be part of every wet lab due diligence process, and the program's equipment schedule should be specific enough to allow an engineer to assess loading requirements against the building's existing design documentation.
Wet lab programs with significant mechanical requirements need enough vertical space to route dedicated exhaust shafts from fume hoods up through the building to roof-mounted exhaust fans, without those shafts conflicting with HVAC supply ducts, sprinkler mains, or structural members. This coordination effort is best resolved during the preliminary design phase, before lease execution, to avoid discovering conflicts that require expensive structural modifications after the transaction has closed.
Dry lab environments have their own spatial demands. High-density compute rooms often incorporate raised access flooring for cable management and underfloor cooling pathways. That floor elevation must be accounted for when measuring effective floor-to-ceiling clearance, particularly in buildings where the structural floor-to-floor height is at the lower end of the range for the building class.
Vibration sensitivity is a building selection criterion for certain wet lab programs. Sensitive instruments that require stable operating conditions — including certain high-resolution imaging systems and analytical platforms — may need floors that are remote from mechanical equipment rooms, loading docks, or high-traffic corridors. Building selection and floor location within the building are both levers that the site selection process can use to address this requirement before it becomes a costly engineering problem during fit-out.
Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumbing Evaluation Protocols
A thorough MEP evaluation for a wet lab building should begin with a review of the existing exhaust infrastructure. If the building has prior lab tenants, existing exhaust shafts and rooftop exhaust fans may be reusable, which can represent a material reduction in the cost of fit-out.
The evaluation should also confirm that the building's domestic water supply has sufficient pressure and flow for the anticipated laboratory demand, and that a point-of-use or centralized deionized water system can be installed within the mechanical room or dedicated utility chase. Deionized water systems require both feed water and a drain for reject water, adding to the plumbing coordination burden.
An environmental review is an important component of wet lab diligence. Buildings with prior laboratory occupancy may carry a history of chemical storage or hazardous materials use that requires investigation before a new tenant commits to a long-term lease. A Phase I Environmental Site Assessment is a standard starting point, and the findings of that assessment will determine whether further investigation is warranted based on the prior use record.
For dry labs, the electrical evaluation is the governing discipline. The assessment should trace the building's power path from the utility transformer to the individual floor panels, identifying any bottlenecks in capacity. A building may have adequate utility service at the transformer but insufficient panel capacity on the targeted floor, requiring a panel upgrade that is a landlord or tenant capital item depending on lease negotiation.
Generator coverage is a critical variable in dry lab evaluation. The diligence process should include a review of the building's utility service agreement, a panel survey to map existing electrical capacity against program requirements, and a review of generator specifications and transfer switching capability. Fiber pathway availability and connectivity options should also be verified during this stage.
A computational research program that cannot tolerate unplanned downtime requires either a building with dedicated generator capacity for the tenant's floor, or a co-located data center arrangement that provides carrier-grade redundancy. Neither can be assumed; both must be verified against the building's existing generator specifications and switchgear configuration.
Code Compliance and Permitting Complexity
Wet labs operate under a more demanding code environment than dry labs in most jurisdictions. The applicable codes typically include not only the standard building code and fire code but also codes governing hazardous materials storage, biosafety levels, and in some configurations, radioactive materials handling. The specific requirements vary by jurisdiction, and tenants should verify applicable codes with local authorities and their design team rather than relying on general descriptions.
Fume hood exhaust systems, for example, must often be designed to meet specific face velocity and containment standards that are verified through commissioning tests, and those tests are typically a permit condition prior to occupancy. Buildings that have never housed wet lab tenants may lack the familiarity with these inspection workflows, which can extend permitting timelines.
Dry labs have a comparatively narrower code exposure, but the requirements that do apply are significant. High-density power installations trigger electrical code review, generator fuel storage and exhaust requirements are governed by fire code provisions, and in jurisdictions with energy codes, the cooling systems supporting high-density compute environments must meet efficiency standards that are updated on regular code cycles.
For any lab program, the permitting timeline should be built into the occupancy date planning from the outset. A compressed timeline that does not account for plan review, inspection scheduling, and commissioning for wet lab systems is a common source of occupancy delays that affects lease commencement calculations and construction loan drawdown schedules.
Evaluating Tenant Improvement Allowances Against Real Infrastructure Costs
The gap between a standard tenant improvement allowance and the actual cost of a wet lab fit-out is frequently the most consequential financial finding in a site selection process. A landlord offering a standard allowance per square foot calibrated to office construction will often find that number covers only a fraction of the wet lab infrastructure cost.
A responsible evaluation compares the net effective cost of occupancy across candidate buildings using lease net present value analysis, not just headline rent. For a wet lab tenant, the analysis must incorporate above-standard TI costs funded on the tenant's balance sheet, the carrying cost of those funds over the lease term, and any early termination exposure if the program changes before the lease expires.
Dry lab tenants generally face a more favorable TI economics picture but should not assume it. High-specification electrical and cooling improvements can be capital-intensive, and landlords in markets where wet lab demand is high may price dry lab infrastructure improvements into the rent rather than the allowance, requiring careful lease analysis to surface the true cost.
Effective rent analysis — which divides net rent cost after TI recovery across the full lease term — is a more transparent comparison metric than face rent for any lab transaction. Teams that compare buildings on face rent alone will systematically undervalue the buildings that offer stronger infrastructure starting points, because those buildings reduce the TI burden even when their headline rents appear higher.
Scoring and Shortlisting Methodology for Lab Buildings
A scoring matrix for lab building selection should be structured in two stages. The first stage applies a pass-fail filter against the non-negotiable base building requirements: adequate floor-to-floor height, appropriate MEP capacity, zoning and use compliance for the lab classification, and structural loading capability. Buildings that cannot clear these filters without capital improvements exceeding the program's budget should be removed from the shortlist before scoring begins.
The second stage applies a weighted scoring model to the qualified buildings. The criteria weights should reflect the program's specific priorities. A wet lab program with a heavy analytical instrument load should weight structural floor loading and vibration isolation more heavily than a computational dry lab, which should weight power density and cooling redundancy above all else.
This matters particularly in committee-driven occupier decisions where the scoring rationale must withstand scrutiny from stakeholders who were not in the building tours.
The shortlist that emerges from a disciplined scoring process should contain no more than three to five buildings. Beyond that number, simultaneous negotiation becomes difficult to manage, and the depth of due diligence required for each building — particularly for wet lab candidates where MEP and structural assessments are essential — dilutes the team's attention at the stage where precision matters most.
Lease Structure Differences Between Wet and Dry Lab Transactions
Wet lab leases are structurally different from both office and standard dry lab leases in ways that extend beyond the TI provisions. Because wet lab infrastructure is deeply embedded in the building — plumbing runs, exhaust shafts, and acid waste systems cannot be easily removed or transferred to a subsequent tenant — landlords often seek longer initial lease terms and carefully constructed surrender provisions.
Surrender conditions in wet lab leases should address the disposition of tenant-installed plumbing, exhaust equipment, and chemical storage infrastructure at lease expiration. A tenant that installs an acid waste neutralization system will face a material cost to remove it unless the lease specifies that it may be surrendered in place or transferred to the landlord's account. This is a negotiated point, and teams should evaluate it in every Letter of Intent before proceeding to full lease drafting.
Dry lab leases have their own structural nuances. Generator fuel storage provisions, raised floor ownership, and cable pathway rights — including whether the tenant has access to the building's conduit infrastructure for fiber routing — are all points that surface in lease negotiation and have operational significance that outlasts the initial fit-out.
Operating expense structures also differ. Wet labs typically have higher utilities consumption per square foot than office or dry lab tenants, and the method by which utilities are metered and allocated across a multi-tenant building determines whether the wet lab tenant pays its actual consumption or a pro-rata share that may be disadvantageous. Submetering is frequently negotiated in wet lab leases and should be evaluated as a lease structure point, not an afterthought.
Diligence Steps Specific to Each Lab Category
For wet lab candidates, the diligence checklist should encompass a review of the existing mechanical drawings to confirm the routing and capacity of exhaust infrastructure, a plumbing survey to identify the location and condition of utility chases, an environmental review to assess any prior tenant history relevant to the program's regulatory starting point, and a structural assessment of the target floors.
The sequence in which these diligence steps are conducted matters. MEP and structural reviews are expensive enough that they should be deferred until a building has cleared the pass-fail filter and advanced to the shortlist. Environmental reviews, by contrast, can often be initiated earlier using publicly available records to flag buildings with prior industrial or hazardous materials occupancy before the team invests in a physical assessment.
For dry lab candidates, the diligence process focuses on the electrical and connectivity infrastructure. This includes verifying available electrical capacity at both the building service level and the floor panel level, reviewing generator specifications and transfer switching capability, confirming fiber pathway access from street-level carriers to the target floor, and assessing the building's cooling infrastructure against the program's projected heat load.
Operational continuity during the diligence phase is also worth planning. Research programs that are running active experiments or computational workloads during the site selection period need to understand how the construction timeline of the selected building intersects with their current lease expiration. A diligence process that surfaces a material structural or MEP deficiency late in the timeline can compress the period available to identify an alternative, adding cost and risk.
Portfolio and Multi-Site Coordination
Organizations operating multiple lab facilities — whether a mix of wet and dry programs across different markets or a campus model with both types on a single site — face a coordination challenge that single-asset selections do not. The lease expiration schedules, TI amortization timelines, and capital improvement cycles of wet lab buildings often do not align naturally with those of dry lab buildings, creating a portfolio management burden that benefits from systematic tracking.
Portfolio strategy for mixed lab programs should account for the fact that research programs evolve over their lease terms. Headcount grows, instrument requirements shift, and the balance between computational and bench science can change meaningfully within a single lease period. A portfolio that was correctly sized at inception may be under or over-allocated within a few years if the organization's research direction changes.
This makes infrastructure flexibility a genuine portfolio consideration rather than just a design preference. Buildings that are designed with the ability to convert portions of their floor plate between wet and dry configurations — including provisions such as plumbing stub-outs in areas currently occupied by computational workstations — offer a form of optionality that has real value over a long lease term, even if it is difficult to price precisely at the brief stage.
Portfolio teams should capture flexibility attributes as a scored criterion in the building evaluation matrix, treating them alongside more conventional factors such as rent and location. The site selection process that documents these attributes systematically creates a record that informs future lease renewal and expansion decisions, not just the initial transaction.
Teams that model program growth scenarios as part of the building evaluation are better positioned for portfolio strategy when leases approach renewal or when research priorities shift. Explicitly labelling these as hypothetical scenarios — rather than projections — keeps the analysis useful without overstating certainty. Building evaluation that accounts for year three and year five infrastructure headroom, for both MEP capacity and power availability, reduces the risk of discovering constraints at a point when the lease term leaves limited flexibility to respond.
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