SPECIALIST FACILITY DESIGN
improvements to positive patient outcomes – may not be met. As an expert in delivering aseptic facilities for the pharmaceutical sector, BES is at the forefront of bringing that specialist experience to the healthcare sector. With a fully integrated, multidisciplinary team, we work with NHS Trusts to guide them from initial concept and feasibility, through to full turnkey project delivery, commissioning, and validation, in accordance with GMP and MHRA regulatory guidelines.
Workflows and spatial layout The design of an aseptic facility must begin with a consideration of the processes required, and the flow of both people and materials within the available space. Expert design of workflows enables optimised spatial efficiency of the available footprint of the facility. This both maximises the production efficiency of the aseptic facility, and embeds a comfortable, practical workspace into the design parameters for the project. The design team’s detailed understanding of processes and workflows is also central to achieving the quality of drug preparation required from the aseptic suite. Facilities must be designed to cascade airflows between ‘dirty’, ‘clean’ (according to the required cleanroom classification), and ‘unclassified’, which ensures that pressure regimes are maintained throughout. Preventing contamination of clean areas by the movement of materials or people from ‘dirty’ or ‘unclassified’ areas is mission-critical for the aseptic facility, and should be the cornerstone of spatial layout planning.
Layout planning expertise Layout planning is an element of the architectural design that demands specialist expertise in cleanroom and aseptic facilities. For example, on a recent project, BES inherited a proposed layout that needed to be revised for a number of reasons.
Detailed solar calculations and analysis proved the benefit of a fundamental shift to relocate the cleanrooms and laboratories from the south elevation to the shaded north elevation. Easy to implement, this change of layout reduced the cooling load considerably, thereby reducing operational cost and energy demand, together with providing an optimised plant layout. In parallel with inverting the critical spaces to reduce energy, we also recognised that the workflow between ‘dirty’, ‘clean’, and ‘unclassified’ was not efficient, and therefore made significant improvements to the people and material flow through re-sequencing the client’s processes. The overall footprint was also very tight, and relocating certain supporting rooms – such as offices and stores – to another
72 Health Estate Journal January 2020
One of the key specialist areas when creating aseptic facilities is the design of high-performance ventilation systems.
part of the hospital, released valuable space to optimise the layout and improve process flow.
Visiting the physical space designated for refurbishment of an aseptic facility was a key step in understanding how the layout could be optimised. The spatial layout was also informed by a detailed briefing with the users to understand the processes and staffing levels involved in the facility, along with potential upscaling plans, so that future-proofing could be built into the design. A specialist contractor can add great value from concept stage onwards, and helps ensure that the basic layout is optimised before detailed design begins in earnest.
‘Agile’ design
When planning an aseptic facility within an existing hospital, part of the role of the experienced cleanroom design and
delivery team is to ensure a level of flexibility in the design to adapt to any latent issues with the legacy building. Historical information on the building structure and services is often inaccurate or unavailable, which can lead to unexpected design and installation challenges once work has begun. In this regard, working with an aseptic facility delivery partner with integrated design and construction expertise can be of considerable benefit. For example, on a recent project to refurbish an existing area within a hospital into an aseptic facility, the BES team discovered that the floor above the designated
accommodation had been constructed of bricks embedded in concrete to provide loadbearing for a plant deck above. This meant that the available locations for service penetrations were severely limited. The proposed ducting routes had to be changed to enable an installation that fitted both the workflow
requirements and the limitations imposed by the building.
Unexpected modifications to the design once the project is on site can have varied causes. There may be latent issues or structural limitations, as in the example above. One of the most common latent issues is live services for other areas of the hospital that transcend the void for the project. Where this is the case, all new service routes and connections must to be achieved without taking the legacy services offline, which can be a complex design challenge.
Devil in the detail
The design of an aseptic facility must consider the flow of both people and materials.
Fundamental to the design of any aseptic facility is a specification that is easy to clean and compatible with cleaning regimes. This includes selecting materials that offer a smooth, seamless, and wipeable surface that will not degrade as a result of either the facility’s operational processes, or any chemicals used during
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