The Life Sciences Building in Oslo will provide researchers, students, and healthcare professionals with the framework they need to tackle the health challenges of the future together. This means the infrastructure must also be equipped for the task. OneCo plays a key role in this.
Between Blindern and Rikshospitalet, the new Life Sciences Building is taking shape. With nearly 100,000 square meters of floor space, it will be Norway’s largest university and hospital building, and a shared workspace for the University of Oslo and the Department of Laboratory Medicine at Oslo University Hospital. Once the building is operational, more than 3,000 people will spend their workdays here.
Here, laboratories, classrooms, and meeting spaces will be located closer together than before. This will make it easier for professionals to collaborate across disciplines, share knowledge, and develop new solutions that can benefit both patients and society.
-Projects like these are extremely complex. They require careful planning, technical precision, interdisciplinary coordination, and reliable execution every step of the way.
Anders Gjelland, project and construction manager at OneCo.
To make this work in practice, a technical foundation capable of handling the complexity is required. The Aars-owned industrial group OneCo is responsible for the entire electrical contracting work on the project—one of the largest land-based electrical contracts in Norway. Power supply, security, automation, and digital solutions must function reliably every day, even when the building is filled with advanced laboratories, educational activities, and critical operations.
For Aars, projects like this exemplify the kind of value creation we contribute to through active ownership. When technical expertise paves the way for research, education, and better healthcare services, value is created that extends far beyond the construction project itself.
The building brings the University of Oslo and the Clinic for Laboratory Medicine together under one roof, where laboratories, classrooms, and meeting spaces are located closer to one another than in traditional research buildings. Photo: Statsbygg
But the work doesn’t stop when the building is completed. A research building of this size will be in use for many decades, and the technical solutions must meet both current and future needs. Among other things, OneCo is contributing modern technology designed to make the building more energy-efficient during operation.
Much of the work will be invisible once the building is completed. Few people will think about everything that went into it once the building is put into use. That is precisely why it is so crucial. When the technology works seamlessly, the people who use the building can focus on research, teaching, and healthcare—and on developing new knowledge that benefits us all.
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Behind the surfaces lie the main electrial panels, fibre infrastructure, fire alarm and access control systems, all invisible once the building is in use. This is where more than 3,000 people will have their daily work.
