DPR Construction, the nation’s top life science facility builder, placed the final steel beam on the warehouse building at BeiGene’s flagship U.S. Manufacturing & Clinical R&D Center at the Princeton West Innovation Campus in Hopewell, N.J. A topping out celebrates the completion of the steel structures for three of the five ground-up buildings on the campus. The other two buildings will be built utilizing prefabricated modules that will be assembled onsite.

“The progress being made in building our flagship U.S. biologics facility is especially important to BeiGene as we continue to expand our global business,” said John V. Oyler, co-founder, chairman and CEO of BeiGene. “Adding these manufacturing and R&D capabilities in the U.S. is a major step toward fulfilling our vision to create impactful medicines that will be affordable and accessible to far more cancer patients around the world.”

Steel erection began in November 2022 for the office and lab, spine, and warehouse buildings working west to east toward the central utilities building. As the structures for the office and lab building progressed, a second crane started on the Spine. The first crane was then able to support the build of the warehouse. DPR worked with trade partners, Canatal Steel and Kenvil to supply and erect the steel, respectively, for all three buildings.

“It has been really rewarding to support a project with such a strong mission behind it that will directly improve the lives of those affected by cancer. Each member of the team has contributed to make this campus a reality,” commented Matthew Hebert, DPR’s project executive. “Hopewell is a bucolic town and our teams have worked hard to maintain its integrity by minimizing the impacts of construction. DPR has supported BeiGene in navigating the state and local jurisdictional requirements for building a life science manufacturing facility, while identifying trade partners, and aligning scopes of work to keep the project on track.”

To support efficiency and worker safety, the DPR team used Synchro, an infrastructure construction management software, to track steel installation. They were able to pull data from Synchro to create visual dashboards to facilitate conversations regarding production, tracking, and sequencing with BeiGene and the trade partners during daily huddles and meetings. The steel model was imported into the virtual design and construction (VDC) coordination model to align with the MEP trades for penetrations and MEP placement.

To date the project team has:

• Removed 110,000 cubic yards of soil
• Poured 10,288 cubic yards of concrete, with 1,700 cubic yards pending
• Installed 363 tons of rebar
• Placed 3,783 total pieces of steel
• Completed 130,898 work hours

“A unique feature of this project is that half of the project is being built in a traditional stick-built fashion, while the other half will be built using prefabricated modules built offsite, delivered, and assembled on site,” noted Hebert. “In conjunction with the steel erection, we have been prepping the site by pouring the concrete footings and foundations for the arrival of more than 235 modules this summer.” As the modules start to be delivered the team will be finishing the installation of the façade on the stick-built structures and fitting out the interior.

The project is scheduled for substantial completion in 2024.