Bristol Myers Squibb Manufacturing Plant, Devens, Massachusetts, USA

In June 2006 Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) made a commitment to construct a new large-scale multi-product biopharmaceutical manufacturing plant in Devens, Massachusetts, US. The project, called 'Project Hummingbird' by BMS, was earmarked for the site near the city of Harvard in Massachusetts because of several factors, including tax incentives, the availability of an educated workforce and the existing infrastructure.

The site itself is on an old army base 35 miles northwest of Boston, which used to be called Fort Devens and as such has substantial service infrastructure already in existence. The site was purchased by MassDevelopment for $17m in 1996 and has been developed as a business park ever since.

The new facility began construction in May 2007 and is expected to be operationally completed by 2009. It should come on-stream after validation by 2011; the validation process is expected to start in 2010.

The project is requiring an investment of approximately $750m. Phase one of the project will employ around 350 personnel but subsequent phases may well see over 550 workers employed.

The new plant will manufacture multiple biotech products but will concentrate in the first instance on Orencia (abatacept), a rheumatoid arthritis drug (T-cell co-stimulation modulator), which is the company's first approved biotechnology drug.

CONSTRUCTION

The project is requiring the construction of six 20,000l bioreactors, one purification train and several tower piperacks which are over 100ft tall. There will be five main buildings, including: a central utilities building (CUB), large-scale cell culture manufacturing building, quality control/quality assurance and cafeteria/administrative block, warehousing building, chemical storage building and wastewater pre-treatment plant. The plant is being constructed in a modular fashion so that subsequent expansion to increase capacity will be made easier.

The facility is being constructed by Fluor Corporation of South Carolina and Parsons Corporation of California. The design phase for two of the buildings (lab/office and manufacturing) has been overseen by the local consultant VHB (Vanasse Hanagen Brustlin Inc), with the aim of facilitating LEED certification for these sections of the new facility.

WASTEWATER FACILITY

The $600,000 wastewater pre-treatment plant, set in a building with 5,000ft² of floorspace and a mezzanine floor, was designed to handle a flow capacity of 530,000gal per day. This includes a redundant system of 265,000gal capacity for each of the components. The system will handle wastewaters from the bioreactors, used buffer solutions, waste clean in place solutions and cooling tower and boiler blowdown.

The contractors responsible for installation of these systems include: O'Brien & Gere, Inc (architect and engineer), Fulcrum Associates, Inc. (construction manager), Brookside Co., Inc, Overhead Door Co, Structural Systems, Inc, Ten Sales, Universal Steel Erectors, Inc and VP Buildings.

The system uses two sequencing batch reactors of 265,000gal for biological treatment, along with two 200,000gal wastewater equalisation (EQ) tanks.

INCENTIVES

BMS was awarded $33m in tax credits by the state, following legislation including a change to the state's investment tax credit rules to let the company claim a refund for 5% of its investment in the facility.

In addition, the state put through a $34m bond issue for infrastructure relating to the new biopharma plant – the new waste treatment and sewage facilities.

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