Agilent Technologies Inc. grew out of its facility in Boulder, CO, and needed to expand to meet the growing demand for oligonucleotides. With their purchase of 20 acres in Frederick, CO, they were able to expand their operations and double their commercial manufacturing of pharmaceutical drugs in a new ground-up, multi-building facility. This project is part of Agilent’s Nucleic Acid Solutions business, which makes nucleic acid active pharmaceutical ingredients. The synthesized ingredients, or oligonucleotides, are part of an emerging class of drugs that use nucleic acid molecules in disease therapy and have the potential to treat various forms of cancer, diabetes, muscular dystrophy, and other disorders.
The initial phase, dubbed “Agilent Apothecary,” consisted of 25,000-square-feet of laboratory space, complete with lab gases, and 125,000-square-feet of pharmaceutical manufacturing space, complete with a central utility plant. Throughout this three-year project, we installed 175,000 lbs. of sheet metal, 80,000 feet of high purity process piping, support utility piping, and central utility piping systems, and 1,300 process instruments, 320 pieces of equipment including boilers, chillers, cooling towers, AHUs, process vessels, and specialty process equipment.
In total, this project demanded 285,000 manhours and required a vast amount of scheduling, BIM coordination, material tracking and staging, value engineering, and strong stating of our prefabricated skids to successfully execute our scope of work. With a pressing quick delivery-to-market schedule, our teams in Denver and St. Louis, office and field personnel alike, worked around the clock to deliver our commitment of quality work to the client. Our St. Louis office even fabricated and delivered to the site to stay on schedule.
