2024 ISPE FOYA Category Winner for Operations, Project Execution

Pfizer Asia Pacific Manufacturing Ltd

Location: Tuas, Singapore
Project: Pfizer API Facility Extension (Tuas 2)

2024 ISPE FOYA Category Winner for Operations, Project Execution

Pfizer Tuas 2 is a 38,873-square-meter (429,000-square-foot) facility on 8.5 hectares which consists of the following:

An organic synthesis plant (OSP) building spanning five floors with five equipment pools for batch sizes between 50 and 1000 kilograms
A dry milling building with a jet mill, hammer mill, and a pack-off suite
High bay warehouse
Dispensaries
Drum store
Laboratory and office building
Central utilities building (CUB)
Thermal oxidizer
Wastewater treatment plant complete with solvent storage and tanker loading/unloading bays

In addition to the existing buildings in Tuas 2, the site has scope for extension of all the main buildings to add additional processing suites, dry-end suites, dispensaries, warehouse, and ancillary equipment as required in the future.

Tuas 2 is a highly automated facility which is designed to facilitate the lean movement of material, reduction in lead times, process turnarounds, and the continuation of best practice in GMP. This design led to the introduction of the central pool concept and the spine corridor connecting all the main buildings.

The central spine corridor is critical for the lean movement of materials, ensuring efficient workflow, and minimizing delays in production. The facility segregates process equipment groups into discrete processing suites (equipment pool concept) which is a fundamental enabler of more efficient process changeovers. The use of wash/wet in place (WIP) technology, the inclusion of cleaning routes along with the use of process analytical technology (PAT) to detect cleaning end points, as well as the automation of cleaning recipes, is expected to result in a 70 percent reduction in the current process turn-around times.

The concept design phase of Tuas 2 was completed in Q4 2019, basis of design (BOD) starting in Q2 2020 with construction commencing Q1 2021, so this project was executed entirely during the COVID-19 pandemic. By the time the project had progressed to basis of design (BOD), the project teams were working from home. Nevertheless, the design, procurement, and construction progressed. The deadlines did not change, and despite the challenges, the project was delivered on time in Q2 2023.

COVID-19 caused massive disruptions to the global supply chain with the global construction industry completely suspended. In spite of this, the project team (led by Pfizer, Jacobs, and Exyte), collaborated and succeeded in mitigating the many challenges that this put in the way of progress.

In the peak construction phase, there were over 4,500 people working on-site each day. Through the director, and the project leadership team, everyone was driven to ensure each and every person on-site got home safely at the end of the day and that safety remained the number one priority.

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, travel was restricted, which meant many of the stakeholders could not visit the site to overcome this, the team on-site used cameras, microphones and ear sets affixed to their construction helmets to provide virtual remote tours allowing for remote contribute to the site’s learnings and continuous improvement in a safe manner.

Through the relentless efforts in implementing the incident free workplace (IFW) behavioral-based safety program, which highlighted the leadership, dedication, and accomplishments in workplace safety and health. Over 14 million safe workhours were reached on this project which was completed with zero lost time accidents.

Despite challenges of much higher restriction of human resources movements and on-site personnel allowance during COVID-19 in countries in Asia, global construction material supply shortage and transportation disruptions, and the time zone differences for team, the project was completed ahead of schedule (1 year shorter) and under budget (about 20 percent less) with no lost time incidents. This is a well-executed project with great effort from every member of the project team.

For these reasons, the Pfizer Asia Pacific Manufacturing Ltd is recognized as the 2024 ISPE FOYA Category Winner for Operations, Project Execution.

Supply Partners and Key Participants:

Manufacturer/Owner Name: Pfizer Asia Pacific Manufacturing Ltd

Engineer/Architect (A&E):