New pharmaceutical industry

“The company, which specializes in neuropathological treatment, planned to set up a facility to produce treatment for a variety of diseases. This was to be a highly regulated, Industry 4.0 production environment, with a lot of smart built-in technology and sensors and very high level of automation. Initially, the scope of our activities consisted of lifting and rigging activities inside the main production plant, including all installations and equipment. The size of the project was challenging, but also the fact that everything had to be completed in a relatively tight time frame, as time to market is essential in the pharma industry and product pipelines have to be accommodated.”

“An engineer was sent over from the Netherlands to provide the required technical expertise, I took care of commercial and local expertise, and we put together a team of experienced riggers to work with us. Over the course of the project, we got to expand our scope from being the main lifting contractor to also include practically all logistics activities on site, moving around the heavy equipment used to build the plant over the course of two years. Our team expanded from 15 to 70 people. We recruited local support on administrative tasks, as well as scheduling and technical support people.

 The multidisciplinary contractor

“Our work ranged from unpacking and unloading to on-site storage, lifting, internal transportation and manipulation, positioning of loads inside the building, assembling and anchoring platforms, skids and tanks. We can now confidently say we’re experts in lifting and manipulating pharmaceutical equipment, which is extremely expensive and often very sensitive. Everything is polished in order to meet the highest standards of hygiene. Even the slightest scratch or bump can have severe consequences. Many items are one-off designs, sometimes costing up to a million dollars – just one error and they have to be recreated from scratch. This is not only expensive, but can cause delays.”