UC Berkeley & Lawrence Berkeley National Lab Relocation

Yes. The Joint Genome Institute (JGI) is heavy on Illumina, PacBio, and Oxford Nanopore sequencers and their associated automated liquid handling lines. The Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) runs bioreactors, fermenters, and analytical chemistry instrumentation. The Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI) overlaps with JBEI on bioprocessing. The Molecular Foundry runs electron microscopy and nanofabrication tools. For a move at any of them we coordinate on calibration windows, OEM service scheduling, and whatever safety inspection the institute schedules.

UC Berkeley Environment, Health and Safety (EH&S) runs the campus lab safety program and coordinates with Facilities Services on building access. For lab moves across or out of Stanley Hall, Li Ka Shing Center, Energy Biosciences Building, Valley Life Sciences, Hildebrand Hall, Tan Hall, and the rest of the campus, we work to the campus EH&S timeline, file the documentation the safety office asks for, submit the chemical inventory the way they want it, and stage our crew around whatever inspection and clearance steps they schedule. Confirm the current sequence with your own EH&S contact, because it differs by campus. We are not the on-campus internal mover. We come in for cross-campus, off-campus, and external biotech tenant relocations. See our compliance guide for documentation details.

Our Hayward operations base is 10 to 20 minutes from LBNL gate and 15 to 25 minutes from the UC Berkeley campus, depending on the building. Rapid crew dispatch into the Berkeley research corridor is one of the operational reasons to use a carrier based this close, rather than one staged further north. We can run same-day site surveys for urgent Berkeley moves and weekend or after-hours shifts without bringing crews in from the South Bay or the Peninsula.

For LBNL or a UC Berkeley lab with biosafety cabinets, regulated chemicals, or more than 20 instruments, we recommend contacting us 10 to 14 weeks in advance. DOE-site clearance windows and campus EH&S inspections add lead time. Add OEM service vendor scheduling for instruments like the Bruker mass specs at JBEI, JGI sequencers, and ultracentrifuges at Stanley Hall. Larger moves benefit from a four-to-six month planning window. See our lab move timeline guide for the full breakdown.

JBEI bioreactors (Sartorius BIOSTAT, Eppendorf BioFlo, New Brunswick) and fermenters travel in air-ride suspension trucks with anti-vibration packaging. We coordinate with your bioprocess team on shutdown, cleaning, and reactor head removal where the OEM specifies it. JGI sequencing platforms (Illumina NovaSeq, PacBio Revio, Oxford Nanopore PromethION) travel under their OEM-published transport procedures with OEM-specified locks. We work with whichever OEM field service team your lab uses, Illumina, PacBio or Oxford Nanopore among them, on the post-move recertification window. Documented instrument tracking and transfer logs travel with each unit.

For short Berkeley moves under one hour of transit, samples often remain in the powered-down -80C freezer pre-chilled with dry ice, with temperature data loggers riding along. For cross-campus or off-campus moves with longer transit windows, we coordinate sample transfer into a backup -80 at the destination, into LN2 dewars, or into temporary dry ice storage. The freezer is transported upright on air-ride suspension with orientation indicators and given the compressor settle period the manufacturer specifies after placement before restart, commonly 4 to 24 hours. See our -80 freezer move guide for the full procedure.

Ontrack Moving carries $10,000,000 Combined Protection Tower for building liability. Campus procurement offices, national-laboratory contracting groups and private research buildings each set their own Certificate of Insurance requirements, and we issue a COI against the coverage we carry. Equipment is covered by federal cargo liability at $0.60 per pound per article under FMCSA requirements. Additional valuation protection is available for high-value instruments such as mass spectrometers, NMR systems, or NGS sequencers. COIs with additional insured endorsements go to whichever procurement or safety office your building routes them through, ahead of move day. See our compliance guide for the COI requirements list.