Owner's Engineering Services

Harris Group Inc. provided Owner's project engineering services for a confidential biopharmaceutical company in California. This project was to build out an unfinished lab space and install a -20 deg C sample store with automatic storage and retrieval systems. The store holds 60 million samples. Other aspects of the project included commissioning all mechanical, electrical and controls systems.

The -20 deg C sample store equipment was manufactured in Switzerland by REMP AG (www.remp.com). This is the largest store ever manufactured by REMP, the leading manufacturer of this type of equipment. The scope of the project included the store, robots, a mechanical mezzanine, refrigeration systems, environmental control systems, lab space, offices, reception, conference rooms, mail and copy centers, coffee and break areas, powder weigh rooms, mechanical mezzanines, walk in fume hoods, plate replicators, bio cells and automated DMSO supply distribution and collection system. The store contains 4 robots that automatically store and retrieve micro tube plates. The flatness of the foundation slab was critical to the accuracy and repeatability of the robots. This project used a surface grinding technique to obtain the specified flatness. All store mechanical, electrical and controls systems are redundant.

The project was executed paperless through a project web site hosted by www.e-builder.com. The documents were maintained by the project architect. All contractor submittals, RFIs, change notices, drawings, reports and specifications were maintained and routed through the project website. This greatly cut down the time to process documents. The web site also generated detailed reports. All documents were submitted in Adobe® Print Document Format.