Teamwork, Collaborative Approach Drives Team’s On-Schedule Turnover of First Four Buildings for Biogen Idec, Inc.

More than 20 organizations, including design and construction entities and the owner’s team, are taking design/build to new heights on a project in Oceanside, CA. Stretching their traditional corporate boundaries, the companies worked together early in the design phase under a single roof in 20,000 sq. ft. of leased space and they continued on site after construction start in what is called “the famous Trailer City” to achieve a common goal: to design, build and qualify the first large-scale biotech manufacturing facility for cancer, autoimmune, and inflammatory therapies for owner Biogen Idec, Inc. (formerly IDEC Pharmaceuticals, Inc.).

The design/build team, which includes DPR Construction, engineer Clark, Richardson & Biskup, the owner, the architect and the MEP design/build subcontractors, recently achieved a significant milestone with the successful on-time completion of the first four buildings in phase one of the six-building complex. They completed construction of the:

• 32,000-sq.-ft. operations building,
• the 65,000-sq.-ft. central utilities building,
• the 70,000-sq.-ft. cGMP warehouse,
• and a three-story, 120,000-sq.-ft. laboratory/office building.

The remaining structures, on track for completion by November 2004, include a three-story, 210,000-sq.-ft. manufacturing facility and a 14,000-sq.-ft. central corridor, or “Spine” building, which connects all of the buildings.

The central utilities building is the “heartbeat” of the complex, feeding electrical power, chilled water, raw and softened water, steam, gases, and other key utilities throughout the campus through nearly one million pounds of ductwork, 21 miles of plumbing piping, 10 miles of HVAC piping, 100 miles of conduit and 300 miles of wire and cable. Requiring 15kV of electrical power to operate, the facility is also equipped with enormous backup power capacity, consisting of 10 megawatts from standby generators fed by five 5,000-gallon above-ground diesel fuel storage tanks.

DPR Superintendent Rod Geilenfeldt credits the efforts of local utility San Diego Gas & Electric, which installed nearly two miles of piping offsite to supply natural gas to the site. “They have been extremely cooperative to help us achieve our milestones,” he comments. The city of Oceanside also has installed six miles of new piping to take the facility’s excess brine offsite to an adjacent lagoon that suffers from a lack of salt water, noted Jay Cantu of DPR. “The facility’s brine waste is now being used to help build up the nearby lagoon.”

From the outset, the owner encouraged collaboration and communication among the design/build team members, understanding the effort that would need to be made to complete the nearly $400 million project within the tight 30-month schedule. A board of directors comprising representatives from key stakeholders on the project meets frequently to discuss issues and concerns. In addition, each of the six building projects is managed by a “building area team” that includes representatives from the client, engineers, architects, subcontractors and DPR. Early on, the “building area teams” established core values and identified critical success factors for the overall project, which have served as roadmaps to help keep them on track with their portions of the project despite a host of challenges.

The turnkey involvement of the major design/build companies from initial design all the way through start-up commissioning and turnover, coupled with the close proximity of the project team members under one roof, has netted significant schedule and cost savings. “We can pull together a meeting within minutes when an issue comes up, allowing us to keep moving ahead,” comments Project Engineer Katie Jeremiah. “On a typical job you’d write an RFI and wait for an answer.”

The design/build team has quickly resolved issues, ranging from a site lighting design issue that was identified early on to devising solutions to make up time lost caused by a delay in getting out of the ground due to record rainfall. One solution that the team improvised to save time was the redesign of the condenser water piping system, 42 inches in diameter, to run underground rather than overhead, according to Richard Osburn, DPR MEP manager.

“It took a little extra effort, but once it was underground and covered, it allowed us to save on schedule, clean up the central plant and create a lot more room,” said Osburn. “Had we installed the piping overhead as originally planned, we would have had to install it much later, after the completion of structural steel. We also took extra precautions, such as installing cathodic protection and protective coating on the the underground condenser water piping, to mitigate any potential risks associated with the process.”

Another big impact to the project was the redesign of the industrial cold water system, which distributes soft water to all the equipment to extend service life, and the addition of a separate domestic cold water system to provide raw water to other areas, including the kitchen, showers and toilets.

As added benefits, the greater attention to quality, collaboration, communication and schedule through the design/build approach has also resulted in innovative techniques and cost savings. One such cost saving innovation was the mechanical contractor’s proposal to combine the HVAC chilled water and the process chilled water systems, typically two distinct systems with their own separate pumps, chillers, tanks and controls. “The thermal mass of the entire chilled water system, approximately 85,000 gallons, works with the HVAC and process loads to enable the deletion of a 30,000-gallon process chilled water tank,” said Osburn, who added that the consolidation of those two systems shaved dollars off the cost, while also saving space in the central utility building that can be used to accommodate future expansion.