BakerHicks, the multidisciplinary design and engineering company, is celebrating the success of one of its major pharmaceutical projects, the GSK Aseptic Manufacturing Facility, at the 2018 Constructing Excellence North East (CENE) Awards. GSK won the Client of the Year category for the project, which was also a finalist in both the Offsite Project and Safety & Wellbeing categories.
The new-build project at Barnard Castle will provide state-of-the-art facilities for the aseptic filling of vials and syringes, and handling of cold chain products, securing the future of aseptic liquid filling operations at the site. BakerHicks completed the scheme design phase and is the lead designer for the delivery phase, working alongside the GSK Engineering team, SES Engineering Services, Star Refrigeration, Turner & Townsend, Daldrop and McLaughlin & Harvey.
A central element to the success of this large and complex project is GSK’s integrated project delivery (IPD) approach. This has seen a high degree of collaboration between everyone involved in delivering the project, leading to efficiencies and minimising risk. As part of this approach, BakerHicks is continuing to provide support and technical advice throughout construction stage with a dedicated lead designer and Building Information Modelling (BIM) manager based on site. This allows the company to use its experience and knowledge of designing facilities of this type to support and challenge the other IPD partners on the project to achieve the best solution.
BIM is being used to coordinate the project as well as providing digital asset management, supporting GSK’s IPD philosophy. BakerHicks manages one central, fully coordinated model which integrates models from various separate design packages and specialist equipment providers to inform the construction of the facility. This not only ensures the integration of the multi-disciplinary design but also allows the team to quickly and proactively detect and resolve any clashes and respond to any on-site questions on construction and installation.
Tom Dickinson, head of project management at BakerHicks says: “GSK is a highly innovative client who isn’t afraid to push the boundaries to drive better project delivery and this is a fantastic example of what that approach can achieve. For instance, the level of BIM integration on a project of this type is unprecedented. Making full use of this technology in this way allows for the coordination of the team and design across what is a large scale and highly complex project. It’s this industry leading approach to the project which makes GSK thoroughly deserving of the CENE Client of the Year award.”
BakerHicks have provided multi-disciplinary scheme and detailed design and management services for the aseptic manufacturing facility.