BES

AstraZeneca Charnwood High Hazard Facility

The project consists of a design and build High Hazard tablet Facility at the Astra Zeneca site in Charnwood; with a cost of £22m. The works incorporated the provision of a new office area for forty five staff working within the new HHTF facility, and a production area for high hazard tablet production. The office area was established in an existing fallow area on the second floor and incorporated desk areas, quiet rooms and meeting rooms. Services to the office area were air conditioning, small power, data complete with new data communications room and motion controlled lighting. This work needed to be completed before work on the production area could be started as the current office staff location was in the proposed new production area.

The new production area was located on the first floor and incorporated fluid bed dryers, granulation equipment and compression equipment; all this production equipment requiring high power supplies, process water requirements, compressed air for breathing and the whole area was air conditioned throughout.

The new production area was designed to be a containment area with an ISO 8 classification although not being validated to this classification. New none sterile change facilities were provided to accommodate the forty five staff with separate male and female facilities.

Chilled water, LPHW and electrical services were all taken from existing supplies, as was the compressed air and domestic services. A new emergency shower fogging system was incorporated as the old system was inoperative.

The purpose of the lift was to locate the main air handling plant and associated extract plant in the third floor plant room at Astra Zeneca Charnwood site.

The existing plant room was located on the third floor and an area for expansion had been set aside for the installation of new air handling plant.

The existing roof of the third floor plant room had been designed to be removed; but had not been removed since its construction. To minimise the lift shock, it was decided to jack up the roof just off its supports and then temporary strap it in its lifted position until the day of the final lift. This procedure was carried out two weeks before the final lift was due to be completed.

The crane lift was a contracted lift so ensuring that the risk assessments and method statements and the crane location position was established and the route into the site agreed well before the lift took place; the work being carried out at a week end to limit the site staff on and around the lift. It was established the greatest weight to lift would be that of the roof which was calculated to be five tonnes, the air handling unit and extract fans where much smaller and less heavy. The reach was in excess of thirty five metres and therefore a one hundred and sixty tonne crane was used for the lift.

The crane arrived on site at 6.30 am and it took three hours to set up and be in a position to do the first lift. This was the removal of the roof which took half an hour to complete with the weight being measured at three tonnes plus the lifting gear making the full lift four and a half tonnes.

The roof was located away from the road and accessible areas and the lifting of the main plant began. We employed a crew to manhandle the plant once in the plant room to its final location. The whole operation including the replacement of the roof was safely complete by 3.30pm.