Designing, operating and managing a multi-purpose-multi-user advanced materials characterisation facility

As everyone in the EM community is well aware, modern electron microscopes (TEM, SEM and FIB systems) require stable environments in order to make them capable of extremely high-resolution performance. Further to this, in many cases, there are a whole range of diverse instrumentation housed with or near the EM microscopes. Multipurpose laboratories and facilities require specialised building design and construction considerations that must work seamlessly with other infrastructure. This is not always a simple process [1, 2].