Skanska Nears Completion of Mass Timber Laboratory in Laurel Hollow, NY

Skanska is nearing completion of a three-story mass timber laboratory at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Laurel Hollow, New York, the Engineering News-Record reported (10-6-26). The Artificial Intelligence and Quantitative Biology (AIQB) building features glulam columns and beams with CLT floor decks. All timber was domestically sourced and fabricated in the US, using wood from sustainably managed forests in the southeastern US.

The project marks Skanska’s first laboratory built with mass timber. With limited experience among its Northeast team and local subcontractors, Skanska drew on the expertise of its Pacific Northwest team, which recently worked on the Portland International Airport Terminal Core Redevelopment project featuring a nine-acre mass timber roof.

The $28-million AIQB building is part of a $248-million, 379,500-sq-ft first-phase campus expansion scheduled for completion in early 2027. The expansion includes neuroscience and cancer biology laboratories, the AIQB research building, and a parking garage. A second phase of the overall $500-million project will add an 81,000-sq-ft research housing and conference center and a 56,000-sq-ft housing and collaborative research center for visiting scientists.

The mass timber structure incorporates 121 glulam components totaling approximately 5,000 cubic feet, 75 CLT components totaling about 12,000 cubic feet, and roughly 55,000 screws for timber-to-timber, timber-to-steel, and other connections. The building also features an 80-ft-long CLT span, which Skanska says is among the longest single CLT spans used in a laboratory and office building on the East Coast.

Despite initial challenges, mass timber installation exceeded expectations, with crews completing the work in approximately six weeks instead of the originally planned two months.