December 2020 – As the Burn Design Lab staff and interns prepared for the winter holidays, making plans with family and wishing coworkers a good break, the Burn Design Lab shop was the very picture of productivity. Boxes were loaded, pallets were prepped, and forklifts were in motion to prepare for a very special occasion: a new location for Burn Design Lab. But don’t worry, we’re not going far.

            In the fall of 2020, Sheffield building owner Tom Bangasser announced a change in how work spaces inside the Sheffield building warehouse would be managed. For some business owners on the Island, this change meant the opportunity to own their own work space inside the warehouse. For Burn Design Lab, the change was an opportunity to move and upgrade our shop and laboratory space inside the warehouse.

The move was no easy feat, however. Time was short and resources were limited. “Directly upon returning in January,” explained Mechanical Engineer Jeremy Su, “we had to re-configure our new shop in a temporarily smaller space, on-board two new employees, start another production run of 20 N95 decontamination chambers, and attempt to keep our on-going projects moving forward.” The resiliency of the team shined through, however, as the space took shape. 

The brand-new laboratory will be custom designed and built for BDL. The space will enable BDL to test multiple types of cookstoves and collect lucrative data necessary for the highest performing stoves. Our new   shop space also provides our engineers with the room and equipment necessary for the iterative design and prototyping stages of our cookstove process. Jeremy added, “Our new shop and lab space gives us the opportunity to grow as an organization and continue to develop clean burning cookstoves and roasters!” The shop space is about 35% smaller.