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The Architect: How to Design a Secure Facility

Imagine being able to layer security into your building the way you do the plumbing or wiring. Genzyme's Dave Kent doesn't have to imagine it-he got to do it.

In hindsight, Kent says he didn't realize how ambitious a plan he had crafted. "For me it was like merging onto a freeway," he says. "First you're thinking, Jeez, these cars are going fast. Then you're in traffic but you're still going slower than everyone else. Eventually, you're part of the flow." It took Kent two years to make security an integral part of Genzyme's culture.

"Now, we have our own layer in the blueprints," Kent said the day he spread the plans across his desk. They are labeled Genzyme Confidential, another standard that Kent created which means contractors must adhere to Genzyme's security standards. A security staffer attends weekly construction and architect's meetings. And Kent provides input into every phase of the project, including IS (he pulled that tactical discipline under his purview too). Brailsford says, "I could not envision doing a project that didn't have security integrated from day one."Superstructure From day one, when Kent set out to integrate security into The Genzyme Center plans, he started from as deep inside the organization as he could get. He sanitized blueprints because some are public documents filed with the city. It doesn't make sense, for example, to identify labs and their purpose. He pushed for, and got, a lecture hall designed with pure acoustics. That way, he can discourage the use of wireless microphones, which can transmit up to a mile. If someone absolutely needs a microphone, it can be encrypted using technology developed for the National Football League that allows coaches to talk to quarterbacks while keeping the other team from intercepting anything (but passes).

The architects' design didn't separate the first floor's semipublic space from Genzyme's second floor lobby. In fact, in an early design, the architects wanted to add doors into the atrium, which Kent's IS officer, Bhavesh Patel, describes as a nightmare. "Imagine your house has two doors that are locked and then you add 20 wide-open doors," says Patel. Kent inserted an access point to divide Genzyme's space from the public space.

He also went outside the organization. He talked to security heads at businesses in the area. He asked about their policies and proposed possible collaborationneighborhood-watch style. He went on his spotting scope trips, mapping out the vulnerable sight lines.

The architects' glassophilia, which led to Kent's spying on his own facility, is starkly on display when we get to the seventh floor. Here, the exterior glass windows and clear-walled offices absorb so much sunlight that artificial lights would be feeble.The building itself will know this, at certain hours. The Genzyme Center will employ a relatively cunning environmental control system. (The building is likely to receive a "platinum" environmental rating, the highest attainable under the comprehensive Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating system managed by the U.S. Green Building Council. Even if The Genzyme Center doesn't hit the mark, it will be one of the greenest commercial buildings in North America.) The building will know when to open the windows. And if it starts raining, it will close them. If it's bright outside, the building will open shades and turn off the (motion-activated) lights. It will also monitor humidity to gauge the need for air-conditioning.