Markets
TUMS Plant
GlaxoSmithKline, St. Louis, MO
Services
General Contractor
Construction Management
When the world's largest producer of TUMS was ready to renovate its aging facility to meet the standards of Current Goods Manufacturing Practices (cGMP), they turned to a veteran for its ability to tackle complex projects.
Challenges
- The St. Louis TUMS facility, consisting of seven interconnected buildings covering one square block in a congested section of downtown St. Louis, operates 24-hours a day during the week, 12 hours per day on weekends, and would remain operational during construction. This was particularly challenging because the project team had to comply with strict Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations to keep construction dust from contaminating the product.
- Adding to the scheduling and regulatory challenges, the facility was 70-years old, the site was very tight and there was limited storage space and delivery access.
Achievements
Complexity or uniqueness of construction
The new roof chiller and raw material silos had to be dropped into the building by helicopter through a portion of the roof. This was completed over a three-day holiday weekend to avoid manufacturing shutdown.
Planning for success
The team held regular meetings with the owner and individual plant departments to discuss construction work schedules in order to ensure the manufacturing process would not be interrupted. They also conducted extensive planning to arrange work on specific systems that required special scheduling, including performing work after hours, on holiday and during standard plant shutdown times.
Shipments were also carefully timed so construction materials arrived as-needed and did not put stress on the limited storage capacity of the plant.
Maintaining plant air quality during construction
To comply with FDA regulations and avoid potential contamination of TUMS products, the group erected an extensive system of temporary partitions, which sequestered construction work from the manufacturing areas.
To further avoid product contamination, specialized tools with vacuum attachments were used to reduce dust from construction work.
Results
Originally, the project schedule was set at three years but the team beat the schedule by one year. During that time lobby areas were added to each floor, a new elevator was installed to separate the production area from the rest of the facility, the product transportation process was reconfigured from a blown system to a vacuumed system with controlled and filtered air, all exterior windows were replaced and a new substation was installed to meet the power requirements of the upgraded manufacturing machinery.
Extensive planning, constant communication with the Owner and plant personnel went a long way to help shorten the three-year schedule down to two years.
Projects completed prior to 2005 were performed by McCarthy.
Honors & Awards
- ACG Award in the Industrial over $5 Million Category
- Keystone Award
