In November 2000, Bristol-Myers Squibb began the construction of a new bulk manufacturing facility in the Republic of Ireland.
The facility was due to cover a 100-acre greenfield site at Cruiserath near Dublin, Ireland. The site was chosen because of its proximity to an existing plant at Swords and Blanchardstown Institute of Technology. Construction required an initial investment of $85m.
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The final investment for the construction of the first three phases of the plant totalled $300m. A plan was submitted to the local authority in 1999 and full planning permission was granted in April 2000. Construction was completed in 2002.
Contractors
Bristol-Myers Squibb awarded a construction contract to Kvaerner (Ireland) in September 1998 for the conceptual design, basic engineering, detailed engineering, procurement, construction, validation and commissioning of the plant.
Automation and control systems were to be designed and installed by Fisher-Rosemount, while Fluor Corporation was awarded a contract for construction and management. It is thought that this was for the construction of an additional phase not covered in the original plan.
Air Products was also awarded a contract for wastewater management and provision of gas facilities.
Site and construction
The facility consists of 12 buildings on a 150,000m² site. The facility consists of three main parts, including areas dedicated to utilities, production and storage of chemicals and finished products. Another area features administration offices and laboratories, while a third part of the plant deals with waste management and disposal. The final facility contains 90,000m of piping, 240,000m of electrical cable and 155,000m of instrument cables.
Rosemount instrumentation
Fisher-Rosemount was responsible for the installation of control and automation systems at the plant. In particular, Rosemount pressure, temperature and flow instrumentation were supplied as part of the initial order, which exceeded £1.7m ($2.5m). All equipment was deemed to be intrinsically safe or flameproof and the key networked intelligent field components were expected to transmit plant equipment diagnostics using a highway addressable remote transducer (HART) and foundation fieldbus communications.
Asset management solutions
PlantWeb architecture in the plant includes asset management solutions (AMS) as a key modular software platform, enabling PlantWeb to use information from field devices to manage plant assets.
The adoption of this approach to control comes as a result of extensive field trials and co-operative evaluation work worldwide. In addition, the cost savings that can be achieved are attractive, both in the initial plant investment and in the plant versatility for competitive manufacture.
Foundation fieldbus
Foundation fieldbus is a bi-directional digital communications protocol used for communications among field instrumentation and control systems. It is one of the only digital fieldbus protocols developed to meet the ISA’s SP50 requirements and one of the only protocols that meet stringent, mission-critical demands for intrinsic safety and use in hazardous areas, volatile processes and difficult regulatory environments.
Foundation fieldbus claims to prevent explicit synchronisation of control and communication for precise, periodic execution of control functions without deadtime or jitter introduced by communications.
It delivers time distribution to fieldbus devices for support of function block scheduling and alarm time-stamping at the point of detection. The use of function blocks allows basic features in measurement and control to be consistently implemented in devices from different manufacturers. Therefore, the time required for operator training, maintenance and engineering will be reduced.
Control engineers will be able to apply function blocks to solve problems without becoming experts in using the function blocks of ten to 20 different vendors.
As it enables digital interoperability among field instruments and systems from a variety of companies. Foundation fieldbus offers users the flexibility to add new devices with the confidence that active control functions on the fieldbus will not be disrupted. Therefore procurement is far cheaper as there are more supplies.
Other benefits of foundation fieldbus include reduced wiring, multi-variables from a single field instrument, enhanced field-level control, simpler integration and easier maintenance. Ultimately, fieldbus will be the key to greater manufacturing flexibility and productivity, higher quality products, and improved regulatory compliance. The easier maintenance helps to reduce running costs.
