Zoetis expansion
Tullamore, Ireland
Merit Award
Sent by: Jacobs
Owner: Zoetis Inc.
Leading design company | Contractor: Jacobs
Subcontractors: Jones Engineering; Kirby Engineering; PJ Hegarty; Ward and Burke; Ardmac; Mercury Engineering
The team behind this 8,500 square meter single-use monoclonal antibody biotech production facility for animal drugs needed to meet their schedule goals so the owner could meet the commercialization of the product as soon as possible. While similar projects of this scale typically take 30-36 months to complete, the team at this plant was able to complete it in just 23 months.
To achieve this, the team used an integrated project delivery approach, which they say promoted communication and collaboration. There was a lot of overlap between the design and construction phases, but little room for schedule deviation, so team members selected business partners who could meet the design assistance requirements.
They used a federated building information model, with Jacobs acting as the design integrator. Each commercial contractor uploaded their individual design models to the federated model daily to enable coordination and allow designers to resolve any issues.
The team also fabricated equipment off-site at the same time as the building shell and core construction, further helping to move work forward efficiently. According to the team, the billing involved 2,119 test packages, with 192 construction billing packages used for 232 building systems, equipment and utilities.
