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A laboratory is one of the most important departments in any manufacturing or production organization. It’s where production actually gets verified — where a company’s quality, capability, and credibility are proven, batch after batch. That makes the lab far more than just another room in a facility; it’s a technical space that has to be planned correctly from day one.
Over the years designing and installing labs across Saudi Arabia, I’ve seen the same pattern repeat: labs that are planned around exact requirements from the start run smoothly for years. Labs planned around general assumptions run into costly rework almost immediately. Here’s the technical checklist I walk every client through before a single bench is ordered.
Before anything else — before equipment lists, before benches, before utilities — define what kind of laboratory you actually need. Not every lab is the same, and a company often requires more than one type under one roof. A general testing lab and a biological lab, for example, have fundamentally different space, containment, and utility requirements, and each needs to be planned according to its own specific standards rather than a one-size-fits-all layout.
The size and nature of the room itself should be selected based on the lab type being planned — the required floor area, ceiling height, and room configuration all depend on what the lab will actually be used for. This is the foundation every other decision in this checklist builds on, so it’s worth marking the requirement and defining the area clearly at the very start, in direct discussion with your lab furniture and design expert, before any further planning begins.
Once the lab type and space are defined, get specific about equipment: how many pieces will the lab actually house, and what is the exact size (footprint and height) of each one? This step drives almost every remaining decision — bench sizing, spacing, utility points, and room layout all depend on knowing exactly what’s going into the space, not an estimate.
Every instrument’s power consumption needs to be documented individually, not assumed. This matters even more for equipment used with chemicals, since these often require fume extraction, a dedicated canopy hood, or in some cases a specially designed chamber — particularly for equipment that generates heat during operation. Planning this at the design stage avoids retrofitting extraction systems later, which is far more disruptive and expensive.
Not every piece of equipment needs the same water supply. Some require both hot and cold water lines; others only need cold. This needs to be confirmed equipment-by-equipment during planning, since retrofitting a hot water line into an already-built lab is a major, avoidable cost.
The standard laboratory workbench is built to a depth of 750 mm and a height of 900 mm. If any piece of equipment exceeds 750 mm in depth, that area needs to be specifically marked and designed for during planning — not discovered after the bench is already built. Always check and mark equipment placement locations at the earliest design stage.
Share the complete technical data sheet for every piece of equipment that will sit on the benches with your electrical contractor — voltage, amperage, and specific socket requirements all need to be confirmed against the real equipment, not general lab standards. This is a step that’s easy to skip and expensive to fix afterward.
Share each equipment’s water and drain requirements with your installation team early, and check the suitable location for each connection carefully. Two important rules from experience: don’t position a sink close to electrical points, and don’t position a sink close to a doorway — both create ongoing safety and workflow issues that are difficult to correct after installation.
If your lab requires an island bench, it’s important that your lab furniture supplier’s team physically visits the site to mark the exact water inlet and drain points before anything is built — this is not a step to shortcut. For electrical service on an island bench, we recommend a single electrical point positioned at the center of the bench, looped internally to power multiple sockets along the bench — this keeps the design clean and avoids multiple separate conduits running to the island.
As a general design principle, we recommend that one side of the lab be exposed to the outside (with access to sunlight/exterior wall) specifically to support extraction — whether that’s fume hood ducting or extraction arms. Positioning equipment that requires extraction near this exposed exterior area significantly simplifies ducting routes and improves overall extraction efficiency.
If the lab requires a gas tubing system, mark all point-of-use gas locations during the design phase. Gas cylinders themselves should always be stored outside the lab — ideally in a dedicated gas cabinet fitted with a gas leak detection sensor, never inside the working lab space itself.
Getting a lab right means treating all of this as one connected system — space, equipment, electrical, water, gas, ventilation, and safety planned together from the very first decision — rather than as separate choices made in isolation and fitted together afterward. This upfront coordination is what separates a lab that runs smoothly for years from one that generates ongoing problems and rework.
MUSK Scientific provides complete laboratory design consultation, furniture, gas distribution, and fume hood installation services across Saudi Arabia, including Riyadh, Jeddah, Khobar, and other major cities, alongside our home base in Dammam. If you’re planning a new laboratory, get in touch — we’re happy to visit your site and walk through these requirements with you directly.
— Muhammad Faisal Ansari, Lab Furniture Expert, MUSK Scientific