"Time is of the essence" in establishing new biotech or pharma production: NNE has developed a "Modular" approach to plant construction, that has been shown to reduce overall construction timescales.

"Time is of the essence" in establishing new biotech or pharma production. Novo Nordisk Engineering (NNE) has developed a "Modular" approach to plant construction, that has been shown to reduce overall construction timescales. NNE uses multiple vendors to produce plant modules, effectively skid mounted equipment, and integrates these on site, to achieve an overall fast-track project.

Ole Abildgaard, a Batch Process Automation Specialist at NNE in Denmark will describe the success of these techniques, using contractors spread across five countries, to the Manufacturing Excellence Ireland conference on "Automation and Asset Management in the Pharmaceutical Industry", scheduled for October 22-23 in Cork, Ireland.

His presentation will give experience from completion of the NovoSeven production plant in Hillerod in Denmark, and will describe the NNE approach that meets the challenges of this approach, including the overall consolidation that integrates the modules into a validated production unit.

NNE describes this technology as "Unique Know-How", and is using the approach on several further commercial fast-track plant construction projects.

Ole Abildgaard, a Batch Process Automation Specialist with NNE A/S, is based in Denmark, and has an MS in electrical engineering plus a PhD in advanced control from the Technical University of Denmark.

He has worked for Novo Nordisk Engineering as project engineer on life science and biotech projects since 1997.

Before then he worked on process control and optimisation in the Danish steel industry.