Transforming design to support rapid response and growth in the life science and pharmaceutical sector

United Kingdom | 23 June 2021

By Helen Buckingham and Chris Davy

Over the last year, the pharmaceutical and life science sector has moved faster than ever before in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. From sequencing and identifying the Covid-19 viral strains, through regulatory approval of safe and effective vaccines to full-scale manufacturing and distribution, the pharmaceutical industry has demonstrated ‘warp speed’ accelerated timescales.

This inspires us as designers to do the same and apply a game-changing approach to design – one that looks to the future and embraces four key elements: future-focussed, agility, safety and teamwork.

Future-focussed

Having a future-focussed mindset challenges us from the outset to design-in changes in scale, use and technology. Outbreak response, for example, requires testing laboratories that can accommodate a major ramp up in throughput as well as a range of pathogens. Building in a resilient scale-up capability is increasingly important to deal with the unknown and is now a fundamental requirement for facilities fighting a major disease outbreak.

Climate change is also an important driver. Responding to this requires highly resilient, energy-efficient buildings that can accommodate a wide range of temperatures. Ventilation rates must be maintained in extreme weather and utilities must remain secure even in the face of more frequent storms, floods and droughts.

Being future-focussed also means designing smart buildings and factories that are easy to update in response to rapid technological advances. This is why more and more of our projects are digital twins – so that future scenario planning can be carried out in a virtual world.

A seamless flow of information is a vital part of a future-focussed mindset. Recent projects have seen more collaboration across companies, with digital tools used not just for virtual meetings but for information flow. This ensures project teams that are spread across several companies all see the latest information.

Agility

While nobody knows what the next challenge facing the pharmaceutical industry will be, it’s likely that a quick response will be required. This means facilities must be agile, designed for speedy changes in focus – if new equipment must be brought in or new technology emerges, for example. Designers must be agile too, adopting the latest powerful and efficient digital tools to provide early design concepts that enable quick decisions on estimating and scheduling – and encouraging the supply chain to do the same.

Applying the full benefits of BIM by creating a digital twin with full integration of design tools at the beginning of a project enables ultra-fast-track delivery. It also enables changes to existing facilities to be made quickly, supporting rapid and thorough decision making.

Safety and security

Flexibility and agility count for nothing if business continuity and the highest standards of safety and security are not integrated into this approach. We must continue to maintain the highest standards, applying quality by design and constructability principles, ensuring we specify robust systems that enable the vital work the pharmaceutical and life science sector undertakes to continue no matter what.

The resilience of engineering systems to component failure – especially for facilities undertaking complex research and biosafety programmes – are also key drivers in our designs. We need to accommodate space for duty standby provision, as well as secure buildings and IT systems to combat physical and cyber security breaches, which are becoming a more significant threat.

Teamwork

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the pharmaceutical industry has worked extensively across governmental boundaries and with the entire supply chain. As designers, we must work collaboratively too – leaving our badges at the door and working as single, unified project teams.

As a designer, you have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable when working this way. Not having everything nailed down before engaging supply chains can seem alien to engineers and scientists. That brings with it a growth mindset and the industry continue to push the boundaries of possibilities.

During Covid-19, we’ve designed facilities in a matter of weeks that, in normal times, would have taken many months, learning lessons that offer real potential for making projects FAST in the future

In the last year, we’ve integrated vaccine production modelling during the early feasibility stage with BIM-based architectural design tools, producing a fully visual and costed design faster than normal. We’ve found that giving the client teams earlier visualisations has led to better solutions to retrofit projects.

We’ve harnessed remote working to engage with more stakeholders than we could have accommodated in a meeting room, and to update drawings and documents with their feedback in real time. This has included live opinion polls and virtual whiteboards. We’ve also created forms to check in with teams and clients on lessons learnt so that we can adjust our approach during the current project, rather than just applying the lessons to the next one.

Innovations like this have helped our clients engage with us easily and have sped up the design process. As the world rebounds from the Covid-19 pandemic, we must continue to push the boundaries of how we work digitally and collaboratively, because if we want the facilities we design to be ready for the future, then we have to be ready for that future too.