By Western Environmental Corporation
This is an ideal option for project planners, business owners, facilities, and quality control personnel looking to build a controlled environment laboratory or clean room for several reasons. The greatest benefit is that you are working with just one team throughout the entire design and build process. This limits change orders, confusion of scopes, scheduling conflicts, and having to work with several firms at once. Communication is of the utmost importance with any construction project. At Western Environmental, communication with our clients is a number one priority. Throughout the duration of a project, we schedule several meetings, so all parties are always on the same page. Comparing this to the historical approach, which would include an architect designing a project, a general contractor winning the bid, and then sourcing several companies to construct the room. What happens when a room fails testing of particle counts, air changes, temperature, or humidity parameters? Here at Western Environmental, we specialize in controlled environments construction and alleviate the stress of receiving a poorly functioning clean room or laboratory, as we guarantee execution and performance as specified. Our Customer Service and Support Offering: - Sales engineers that can travel to any location to meet with a customer and walk through a potential job site - Engineers experienced in all MEP’s - Onsite project managers who travel to our jobsites and oversee installation from start to finish - Estimators with 30+ years of industry experience - In house staff for preventative maintenance, testing and certification What determines the cost of a controlled environment room such as a cleanroom? Several factors need to be considered when designing a new controlled environment project. For starters, the type of room: - Whether a Softwall or a Modular Cleanroom - The process taking place in the space, such as precision fabrication, critical measuring, life sciences, educational, packaging, hazardous, research, etc. The process is equally as important to know upfront - Location of the build and complexity of site access - Sizing of the room or rooms, and if structural steel is needed - HVAC specifications – the larger the cubic footage the bigger the system(s), and the tighter the specifications the more complex the design - How many HVAC systems should be used, multiple systems can offer some or full redundancy, which may be a critical requirement along with redundant control systems. - As well as HVAC equipment location, such as a facility roof or mezzanine, an exterior concrete pad, or inside the facility near the room, or on the new room’s roof - Adders such as flooring, pass thru’s, central vacuum systems, workstations, air showers, gowning rooms, automatic sliding doors, specialty doors, overhead doors, removable walls, walkable decks, staircases/ladders to access decks, cranes, fire suppression, etc. Just a few of these may add a decent percentage to the overall cost of a project.
