Shire Utilities – Utility Panel Development

Shire Plc originated in the United Kingdom, with headquarters in Ireland. The Pharma giant focuses on the development, marketing and research of prescription drugs that combat rare diseases and highly specialised conditions, with products available worldwide in more than 100 countries.  The 120-acre facility in Piercetown, Co Meath was the chosen location for this project, the €371 million pharma manufacturing facility aim to implement the latest bioprocessing techniques available. This new location is set to create over 400 extra jobs within the pharma and biotechnology industry.

That is why Suncombe with over 50 years of expertise within the pharmaceutical and processing industry were proud to take part in this project as the mechanical designers and fabricators of Utilities panels and processing products, the construction within the site was carried out by Jacobs who implemented all processing pipework to meet the demands of the project.

Objectives

Within this project the task given to Suncombe was to design and fabricate 20 utility panels with a variation of 5 different designs, this task was mainly handled by Suncombe with the support of Jacobs in the implementation and connections of the product pipes within the building site. Communication was open between Suncombe, Jacobs and Shire Plc. The main objectives of designing and fabricating the utility panel designs were:

• To minimize the amount of equipment inside the clean room

• Maintain a level of cleanliness by only having the 316 stainless steel utility panels within the clean room.

• Remove the risk of contamination through open ends

• Allow for dual filtration and multiple inlets and outlets

The design had to allow for off-site fabrication, testing and validation to reduce construction activities.

Benefits

The integration of wall utility panels within the clean room will reduce risks within the production process and enhance the ability of the facility to maintain production and quality. The design and layout of the utility panels should allow the operation of the process to be optimized. Therefore, there is an overall improvement in efficiency and cost effectiveness of the process. In addition, operational safety will be greatly enhanced, with full containment of harmful fluids and gases.

Suncombe Comments

Lewis Stubbs, the lead design engineer at Suncombe, commented “It was a great opportunity to work within a multi-disciplined team and very exciting to be involved in a project in Ireland, the centre of all pharmaceutical and biotech related production in Europe. I enjoyed the challenge of the evolving nature of the project while implementing and managing changes.”