Northumberland-headquartered Merit, which claims to be ‘a leading offsite engineering and construction specialist for technically complex buildings’, says it has completed the first construction phase of the UK’s first purpose-built CAR-T cell manufacturing facility in record time. In line with the urgent need to bring life-saving advanced therapies to the UK, Merit delivered the new £66 m facility in 17 months, which it says is ‘three years faster than the biotech industry standard of approximately five years’. This included planning and design, and just 12 months spent on site.
Merit was appointed as the main contractor to deliver the new four-storey, 7,500 m² facility for Autolus Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing next-generation programmed T cell therapies for cancer treatments. The new facility is part of a larger plan to create a life sciences district in Stevenage by developers, Reef Group and UBS Asset Management, and will assist in the growth of the cell and gene cluster in the town centre, which is currently the world’s third largest.
The phase one completion of the facility saw the handover of Grade C cleanrooms to Autolus, enabling it to transition seamlessly into its next phase of growth. Once completed, the facility is expected to process 2,000 treatments annually, and create 400 new jobs in Stevenage.
Th new facility utilises Merit’s FLEXI POD, a hybrid solution which the company says is ‘particularly suitable for complex high-technology facilities’ – comprising aspects of Modern Methods of Construction for the shell and core, and an offsite-manufactured fit-out facilitated through a Pre-Assembled Module (PAM) and POD strategy. Merit says harnessing this system enabled three-quarters of the construction work to take place off site, with 300 PAMs and 15 UltraPODs totalling 900 tons manufactured in Merit’s 270,000 ft² Northumberland factory, and shipped to Stevenage for installation by its specialist team.
It said: “The result is a radical step change in construction productivity, sustainability, and time to use, reducing carbon emissions while accelerating the delivery programme of the whole project to 22 months – a significant time-saving achievement over the five-year average traditional build time for similar facilities in the sector. In addition, it offers Autolus reduced capital and revenue costs, as well as a substantial reduction in external professional consultant fees.”
The new facility has been designed to BREEAM ‘Excellent’ rating, with scope 1 Net Zero carbon enabled using heat source pumps and heat recovery systems, and 5D BIM technology to reduce waste.
Tony Wells, CEO of Merit, said: “This project is of critical importance to the UK biotech industry, and therefore we are very proud to have been able to deploy our unique offsite construction methods to deliver this vital facility in record time. Productivity is an issue in traditional construction methods, but our approach means projects are delivered more quickly, and also crucially more sustainably.”