Merck & Co. B46 Vaccine Expansion
The Merck B46 Vaccine Expansion project is a renovation of approximately 104,405 square feet of existing vivarium, support and mechanical areas into a new state-of-the-art flexible lab and office facility to support the commercial viability assessment of the new drug campaigns.
Project outcome
These new flex labs will be utilized to support the collocate of both research and manufacturing groups for development and analytical functions to enable future collaboration of operations, which will increase the speed of product development to reduce time to clinical trials. In addition, this project will support the need for increased headcount of 172 new FTE’s to allow for the continued growth of the vaccine/biologics groups to meet current development and trial support demands.
As a result, the project will provide 58,000 square feet of new BSL-2 flexible laboratory space, 36,000 square feet of new ‘open’ office, conference and support space, and new MEP systems to support including; (2) semi-custom lab AHU’s, (1) return air office AHU, support HVAC (EF’s, FCU’s, Lieberts), air compressor, vacuum pump skid, process chilled water skid, RO/DI skid and distribution, clean steam generation, (7) new autoclaves, bio-waste lift station and holding tank, lab gas bulk tanks (O2, CO2, N2G, LN2), emergency generator, UPS, electrical distribution and updates to the existing building substations.
In addition to the MEP upgrades, the project will support the purchase and relocation of 1,200 pieces of laboratory equipment including; critical temperature units (CTU’s), centrifuges, bio-reactors (84-3L’s, 8-50L’s, 2-250L’s), HPLC’s, AMBR-250, bio-safety cabinets, fume hoods, laboratory casework, (12) environmental chambers, (2) cold room/labs, (1) 2-8C cold bulk storage and (1) -20C bulk freezer.
The project is targeting LEED Silver certification from the USGBC.