The Safety Engineering Activity (SEA) supports the Division of Safety by providing specialized biosafety and biocontainment engineering services that help ensure a safe research environment for NIH personnel.
SEA reviews the design of all new construction and renovation projects at the NIH to verify compliance with the NIH Design Requirements Manual (DRM) and applicable biosafety engineering standards. Through this process, SEA helps ensure that critical safety and engineering controls are properly incorporated into facility designs.
For high- and maximum-containment laboratories (BSL-3 and BSL-4), SEA provides engineering support for annual HVAC and emergency power verification, as well as pressure decay testing of containment barriers. These activities help ensure compliance with NIH and CDC requirements while maintaining the integrity of containment systems and providing safe, reliable research environments—even under designated failure conditions.
