About

Our customer, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, wanted a trusted partner to support them with a huge project. The move was to exit them from 16 locations in England and move them to one super laboratory in the heart of the life science district. They needed a partner with experience, ability and scale to deliver this on time and on budget, with minimal downtime for their extensive work.

The Challenges

For Harrow Green Laboratory Services, this was their largest project to date. Meticulous planning was needed for four years before these moves took place. New teams had to be employed and trained to our very high standards and a large team had to be ready to move more than 7,000 items and 200,000 samples.

Challenges with this project were:

• Volume – size and scale of the project;
• Notice periods and required agility – the project was delayed several times including at four weeks from go live;
• Volume of stakeholders – the customer had over 400 stakeholders involved in the move;
• OEM collaboration – collaboration with many original equipment manufacturers and utilising their equipment where needed;
• High value and delicate equipment – Large and heavy equipment needing specialist moving tools;
• Zero risk/zero downtime – planning and execution had to occur to ensure that “science didn’t stop”.

The Project

Being responsible for the largest laboratory move in Europe to date was an honour for our teams. Ensuring we had specifically trained teams and project managers for these moves was imperative and took a lot of organising.

• Programme spanning 32 weeks, delivering more than 12 move phases,
• 532 vehicle loads,
• Powered transport – 86 vehicle loads using technology in the vehicles that allow the items to be moved without the need to decant/recant, reducing cost and reducing risk. This included obtaining a special transport exemption from the Department for Transport.
• Recycling unwanted assets including reuse, repurpose and recycling.

Programme delivery included 12 colleagues working full time as the project team. Over 150 colleagues working on the project, with peak levels at 110 each day and colleagues collaborating from six Harrow Green locations.

Other notable parts of the project

• Community – 62 local people employed on the project
• University accommodation was utilised throughout the project to support universities/education estates, supporting local enterprises
• Local schools were utilised for training and recruitment workshops
• Technology – provided with the ability to view/live stream inside of vehicle bodies to ensure that high value vehicle loads were delivered securely
• Bespoke security clearance – cleared 160 people on the team with advanced security checks to enable site access.