Work well under way on world's premier measurement lab

A drive past NIST headquarters in Gaithersburg, MD, these days might have you looking twice. There's an ever-growing stockpile of dirt on the campus' southern side from excavations, five (and soon to be six) cranes poised high above a construction site and the sight of people and machines busily at work on a very special building.

When it is ready for occupancy in 2004, the 47 480 m2 (511 070 ft), $235.2 million Advanced Measurement Laboratory will give NIST and its partners in U.S. industry and science access to research and development capabilities not available anywhere else in the world. The laboratory will have state-of-the-art controls for humidity, temperature, vibration, and air quality. Two of the AML's five wings will be built underground with special active and passive vibration isolation systems. The unique characteristics will help its occupants achieve higher quality reference materials, improved measurements and standards, and more rapidly developed research advances.

Instrument East, currently scheduled to wrap up in mid-2003, will be the first portion of the AML finished. Other target completion dates are mid-to-late 2003 for the cleanroom and the Metrology East wing, and late 2003 for the Instrument West and Metrology West wings.

For more information on the AML, along with an artist's rendition of the finished facility and a live webcam view of the construction site, go to http:// aml.nist.gov.