BMS Large Scale Cell Culture Manufacturing Facility
Dublin, Ireland
Best Project

Owner Bristol-Myers Squibb
Design Firm & Contractor Jacobs Engineering
Key Supplier Techniserv Inc.


Jacobs Engineering’s comprehensive service as EPC contractor on a $700-million pharmaceutical complex for Bristol-Myers Squibb just northwest of Dublin gives it bragging rights for the extremely fast-track 26-month delivery of a facility to begin production of a life-saving anti-cancer drug on schedule, with more such drugs on the horizon.

BMS chose to redevelop a redundant facility to reuse existing buildings and infrastructure, which Jacobs turned into a vibrant campus, breathing new life into an economic mainstay of the area.

The scope included construction of a three-story, 21,570-sq-meter cell-culture manufacturing facility with a dedicated clean-utilities generation plant, a three-story, 16,345-sq-m laboratory and administration building as well as a two-story 3,405-sq-m central utilities building with three gas-fired boilers on the site of an old solvent tank farm, whose demolition and soil remediation was on the critical path.

Work included upgrading and expanding a wastewater treatment plant as well as upgrading and more than doubling the size of an existing 2,200-sq-m warehouse. 

The challenge of maintaining a safe site with 36 primary subcontractors, numerous lower-tier subcontractors and a workforce that peaked at 2,200 was met with behavior-based safety training that continually focused attention and action on safe behavior. It was undertaken by the extended project team—including the owner—to ensure a common safety culture was achieved.

“It’s not just about tasks,” says Ken Gilmartin, Jacobs vice president of advanced facilities. “It’s about the whole psychology of taking risk and putting themselves in danger—and not just on the job, but in the 24/7 perspective.” The result was a total recordable incident rate of 0.68 through 6.5 million hours worked. In the words of the client’s project director, David Wilson, Jacobs “achieved the plan outcome in an exemplary manner.”

“BMS was a fantastic client,” says John Cronin, project director. “We really bonded and realized that there are no conditions in which either of us will succeed unless we both succeed.”


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