Johnson & Johnson

J&J covid vaccine launch facility

Sector

Life sciences

Project Value

€130m

Project Location

Netherlands

The challenge

Scaling up vaccine production at speed

During the pandemic, Johnson & Johnson committed to providing covid-19 vaccines on a not-for-profit basis to address unmet medical needs. But to provide the world with half a billion vaccines per year, they needed to dramatically increase their production capacity.

It called for a major life sciences construction project capable of delivering capacity expansions across the company’s entire logistics and production facilities. This included raw material warehousing, media and buffer prep, QC laboratory testing and cold chain storage.

Even more challenging, to meet their vaccine supply commitment, Johnson & Johnson had a timeframe of just 9 months to get the new facilities up and running – and just 12 months to get regulatory approval for the first commercial batches.

The role we played

At Pulse Consult, we were proud to support such a crucial project, bringing a wealth of life sciences construction expertise, and a strong track record with the client team. We led a fast-track project to build a brand new modular facility in the Netherlands, where Johnson & Johnson could produce huge volumes of their covid vaccines, at speed.

Due to the unfolding emergency, we had to go from inception to production as quickly as possible, getting the vaccines out into the world. We moved at pace, providing close cost and schedule control to make sure the facility was delivered on time, to the client’s high standards – while meeting environmental, health and safety (EHS) requirements and hitting value-for-money KPIs.

Our construction consultants managed the schedule on a day-to-day basis, with regular progress reporting and schedule risk assessment, as well as daily toolbox talks to maintain project momentum. We also provided full estimation and costing, cost forecasting, scope change management, cash flow reporting, payment application reviews and savings capture.

The results

The project gave Johnson & Johnson 7,500ft² of extra downstream production capacity. We also modified their original vaccines facility to connect seamlessly to the new space, with upgrades to its waste and transfer systems, as well as a new freezer storage building, enablers for cold chain transport and QC lab space.

We brought in additional bioprocess equipment, including a fill skid and sealer, multi-channel UF/UD skid, buffer dilution skid, wave bioreactor, purification system and process vessels. A new manufacturing execution system now supports planning and coordination, and the site has significantly increased capacity for warehousing, media and buffer prep operations.

Together, these upgrades helped Johnson & Johnson hit their target of producing 80 urgently needed vaccine batches a year, preventing disease and protecting millions of people, all over the world.

This project is an example of a socially responsible response to an urgent public health need and therefore the International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering (ISPE) Facility of the Year (FOYA) Judges deemed it a 2022 category winner for Social Impact.

Pulse have been a key business partner throughout planning and execution of the [Vaccines] project scope of works – we rely upon their expertise to support on local cost knowledge, measure works in place, negotiate with our sub-contractors; ensuring cost & schedule resiliency in addition to all the standard project reporting metrics on cost, schedule, cashflow & change management.

James Lane

Global Director of Risk and Project Controls

Johnson & Johnson