Topeka ? The Kansas Bureau of Investigation will soon open a new crime laboratory that looks like it could be used as the set of a new TV crime drama.

In fact, the $55 million facility on the campus of Washburn University in Topeka will be able to handle all of the same kinds of high tech scientific crime analyses that have become familiar to viewers of shows like “CSI.”

That includes everything from fingerprint and tire-track analysis to DNA matching, chemical and biological analysis, ballistics and even “digital forensics,” which involves studying the contents of computer hard drives, cellphones and other mobile devices.

In fact, said T.L. Price, assistant lab director who served as project manager during construction of the new lab, digital forensics is now the fastest growing area of forensic science and is expected to become one of the largest units within the KBI lab system within a few years.

T.L. Price of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation gives members of a legislative committee a guided tour of the agency's new 5 million crime laboratory, which is scheduled to open next month.

“It’s growing the way DNA analysis was growing 10 years ago,” he said.

On Wednesday, Price led a tour of the new facility for members of the Legislature’s Joint Committee on State Building Construction, a group that has been overseeing the project since it was authorized in the state’s 2013 budget.

“I think the state will be able to get its money’s worth now from our employees,” said Sen. Marci Francisco, D-Lawrence, who serves on the committee. “We’ve needed a lot of work done from KBI labs and have not given them the space to get that done.”

When the new lab opens next month, it will replace one located in the basement of a converted school building in central Topeka. Price said when that facility opened in the 1980s, it employed only 19 investigators.

Today, the Topeka lab employs more than 60 people, but KBI officials said there is literally no room for them to grow any more.

“What we are leaving is a space that really didn’t meet our accreditation standards,” KBI Director Kirk Thompson said. “It had no space for our scientists to work individually. They had to wait for instruments; they had to wait for space. What this facility will do is let us be much more efficient in how we move, how we do our work, how we store evidence and how we process all of our evidence.”

Price said the new facility was built from the ground up for the sole purpose of being a crime lab, and every element of the building is engineered for that purpose. That includes such details as the air handling systems, which have to be able to capture and filter noxious fumes, to the widespread use of natural lighting throughout the building, which he said is important in analyzing many types of evidence.

When the new lab opens, Price said, the KBI is authorized to add 12 more positions, bringing it to 74. But the facility is designed for growth over at least the next 20 years and can accommodate as many as 108 investigators.

It also includes classroom space that will be shared with Washburn University, which offers programs in forensic sciences, criminal justice and legal studies.

The Topeka lab is just one of four that the KBI operates. Others are located in Kansas City, Pittsburg and Great Bend. But it will be the only one with facilities for all of the various forensic science disciplines.