The campus Technical Services provide an uninterrupted and seamless physical infrastructure for running world-class science in a changing and sometimes challenging external context. The primary responsibilities of the technical services are two-fold. First, to maintain and update existing facilities.
Second, to develop new facilities, laboratory spaces and common areas. The technical services provide a very responsive electronic helpdesk system for people to report and track a wide variety of technical and other problems and facilities requests.
Architects
The Bangalore Biocluster aims to set up a unique hub for highly interactive research for basic scientists and clinical researchers. To develop this space, a dedicated Architectural team at NCBS helps design, plan and coordinate the activity of setting up labs, facilities, and common spaces throughout the campus. Their role is key to ensuring that the Biocluster can accommodate the expanding infrastructural needs of scientists, while maintaining the natural beauty and aesthetics of the campus. In this task, they work in close coordination with a team of engineers who develop and maintain these facilities for the campus scientists.
The Engineering team consists of the following sections:
Civil Engineering Section is responsible for civil works and maintenance of roads, fire hydrant systems, water supply, Sewage Treatment Plant, landscaping, greenhouses and all the civil infrastructure, for the entire Bio-Cluster.
New works are undertaken in liaison with the Architecture Section in accordance with the Campus Master Plan and aesthetics. The civil team also assists other teams in campus related services for day to day and smooth functioning of the facilities. The team is coordinating with project and other various groups to meet the requirement of the Bio-cluster.
The Electrical team takes care of all Electrical installations (HT/ LT) in Biocluster, including the housing complex. The main responsibility of team is Operation and Maintenance (24/7 X 365 days) of HT and LT electrical installations, DG sets, Fire alarm systems and Lifts.
Electrical team oversees operation and maintenance of UPS systems and stabilizers to ensure smooth and uninterrupted electric supply to all critical facilities such as the Imaging facility, Cluster, Mass spec, NMR and all the lab equipment.
Apart from O&M, Electrical team also undertakes all major/minor modification works in the bio-cluster.
The IT section provides support, design, technology selection, systems management, administration, review and development of IT policies and standards to help the scientific community on campus.
NCBS runs its own mail server, web server, firewall, backup server etc., all of which are serviced by the IT team. Most of the servers being deployed use open source solutions to meet current requirements. The IT team also uses open source solutions to design with new applications such as schedulers for campus services, and bar code systems to monitor animals in the animal and fly facilities. Virtualization is also being carried out by the group for critical servers to avoid blackouts.
The campus backbone is connected in ring with 10G uplinks from the core to the edges with a capability to expand to 40G in the future. Wireless deployments are focused on providing as much coverage as possible, and NCBS provides free wireless connectivity (named Hotspot) for all guests to the campus. To facilitate intensive computations, the NCBS IT Services has set up a high performance computing infrastructure hosted at the data centre. The high performance clusters are used for computation intensive simulations, model calculations, NGS Data Analysis. In an effort to meet the ever growing requirement for data storage for scientific and computational raw data, a centralized data storage system has been implemented. The system has a capacity of 750 TB with redundancy and high availability which can scale beyond a petabyte for future expansions.
The IT team also manages the surveillance CCTV infrastructure, and is also involved in the maintenance of the automated Fire extinguisher system installed all over campus.
The AC Maintenance team manages the heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) needs of the campus. HVAC is a critical requirement for all core scientific activity on the campus (about 19510 m2 of conditioned space).
There are 3 independent centralized chiller plants and Air Handling systems to meet the load requirements. Several package units, split units and cold rooms are also installed in few places to meet the requirements.
The AC team oversees the round-the-clock operation, monitoring and maintenance of chiller plant & HVAC in critical facilities like Animal house, Bio-safety lab, Computer cluster, Mass spectrometry lab etc.
The team also manages modification and up gradation of HVAC works in the Bio-cluster campus.
The Instrumentation team provides support to laboratories for procurement, installation and trials of equipment specially meant for scientific activities, and also maintenance of the existing equipment and their safe operation. The section also takes care for pre installation requirement in coordination with other sections for installation.
The group is also responsible for operation and Maintenance of Audio-visual facility at Lecture Hall, Telephone exchange/ Facility , Access control, Video/ Audio conferencing, CCTV , RO water plants, Gas vacuum and Gas Lines, PA system etc.
NCBS has a well-equipped in-house mechanical workshop that helps researchers in fabricating custom-made experimental equipment. Currently, three skilled and experienced machinists help researchers with the design and assembly of diverse scientific equipment such as Faraday cages for electrophysiology rigs, custom platforms to hold tissue samples, wind tunnels, micro-fluidic chambers etc.
The recent addition of a CNC vertical milling machine now allows the fabrication of intricately designed experimental products such as critical moulds with the capacity for multiple production and a constant manufacturing accuracy. The Mechanical workshop also runs short courses to train students in using its facilities.
The electronics workshop has an experienced electronic engineer for the designing and assembly of electronic circuits, preparation of printed circuit boards, and programming for ARDUINO digital drive cards required for research purposes. The workshop also manages stocking of basic electronic components needed for testing and assembly of electronic circuits for the research as well as the occasional maintenance of existing equipment.
The QA/QC unit is a newly created Cell in technical services to ensure quality and safety of works being executed under both Project and Maintenance Divisions of Bangalore life Sciences Cluster. Currently the QA/QC unit operates with Electrical Engineer(F) and Civil Engineer(D),NCBS.QA/QC unit works under the guidelines similar to that of CPWD/ISRO(DOS)The team provides inputs on quality and safety right from concept to commissioning. Team provides assistance in technical evaluation of tenders, field test, material inspections as may require. Conducts field inspections and communicate commissions /omissions and or deficiencies to site engineers.
The group is responsible for all the major construction projects for NCBS.
During the last year the group has completed the building of the following units: a dining-cum-recreation hub; guest houses at the CB site; the clinic building; and a vertical extension to the current animal house. At present, the construction work in progress consists of a laboratory building for inStem, and a new hostel building.