Shire Wins ISPE Facility of the Year Award

The International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering (ISPE) announced Shire as the 2018 Facility of the Year Awards (FOYA) Overall Winner at the 2018 ISPE Annual Meeting & Expo in Philadelphia, PA. Shire was awarded for their Building 8 facility integration project in Los Angeles, CA. In this project, Shire used innovative design practices to successfully integrate a new purification facility into an existing operational campus.

A primary goal of Shire’s project was to avoid any interruption to ongoing operations at the site, which operates one of the largest plasma fractionation facilities in the world, according to ISPE’s Nov. 6, 2018 press release. Building 8, the new 120,000-ft² purification facility, was designed and built with significantly improved process, material, and people flow. 

Project execution success factors included lean construction concepts, such as working in a co-located space and using advanced technologies. The project team used building information modeling to model systems including conduit, hanger rods, and seismic bracing. This modeling allowed the team to resolve over 10,000 “clashes” (i.e., locations where planned components would not fit) per week during the design phase, as well as perform a 3D virtual “fly through,” to adjust equipment access and optimize process flow. 

A unique management tool used by the project team was a proprietary Monte Carlo-based risk modeling software that allowed the team to simulate thousands of outcomes of potential problems that accurately predicted the likelihood and severity of schedule and cost impacts, allowing the team to develop mitigation plans to prevent them from affecting the project.

Key project partners included CRB (a global consulting, design, and construction services firm) and HDR (an architectural company based in Pasadena, CA).

Source: ISPE