(The EETD Applications Team includes: Satish Kumar, Paul Mathew, Dale Sartor, and Mayank Singh.) Developers of benchmarking tools are confronted with some common issues and some unique challenges. This presentation will describe the challenges faced by us while developing a web-based benchmarking tool for laboratories. Attributes such as the i) analytical and data visualization capability, and ii) flexibility and usability of the tool are common to any benchmarking effort. The various classification scheme and categories of laboratories, each with its own energy signature, posed a design challenge both for the database as well as data input forms, which was unique to this effort.   The presentation will describe both the web interface as well as the underlying analytical framework that allows for a comparative evaluation of aggregated and end-use performance metrics (e.g. kWh/sf and W/cfm) across different laboratories. The overall functionality of the benchmarking tool will be explained vis-a-vis the tools and the technology that were selected for final implementation.