Vacant Facility Now Pivotal in COVID Battle

129 North Main Street

BUILDING MARKET

n By Pete Malikowski

On Monday, April 19, 2020, Cianbro received a call from Puritan Medical Products requesting help. The medical products manufacturer was in desperate need of expanding their current production beyond their Guilford, Maine facility, which had been operating nonstop throughout 2020. Puritan Medical Products is one of two major manufacturers in the world that produce swabs for medical diagnostic purposes on the front-line in the battle against COVID-19, as well as other infectious diseases such as the flu. Puritan had been challenged to develop a plan to double production to 20 million swabs per month at a new facility by July 1. Cianbro immediately sent a team to Guilford to discuss our willingness to help.

Cianbro had recently hired team member Paul Dube, a longtime Puritan employee to be our facilities manager. His

129 North Main Street facility, before

relationship with Puritan started the conversation about how Cianbro could facilitate Puritan’s expansion. As discussions progressed, it became obvious Cianbro could not only help build a new facility, but also owned an old manufacturing facility at 129 North Main Street in Pittsfield, Maine that could be retrofit to meet their needs.

The following day, Cianbro and its subsidiary, A/Z Corporation, reviewed the existing facilities in Guilford and Pittsfield, and developed a proposal, in partnership with Puritan to retrofit the 129 North Main Street property.

Efforts quickly shifted to generating a design for the facility, identifying critical long-lead procurement items, and mobilizing to the site. Cianbro and A/Z utilized the entire depth of the organization to get the project up and running. The team met daily with Puritan via Zoom to develop and refine the design, leveraging technology to enhance communication and streamline the design process. Construction teams worked around the clock, 7 days a week to execute the delivery of the facility.

THE SCOPE OF WORK INCLUDED:

48,500 square feet overall renovation of an old manufacturing facility to produce medical swabs for a July 1 production start date

Demolition of existing production space down to its core structural frame

17 – 40-ton rooftop HVAC units

52,000 square feet of roof replacement

14,500 square feet of FRP for clean room walls

45,600 square feet of epoxy flooring

18 tipping machines

29 wrapping machines

This was a major design-build project that Cianbro, A/Z, and Starcon, all part of The Cianbro Companies, worked on together. Craft team members frequently worked outside of their core trades. Cianbro Fabrication & Coatings Corporation delivered structural steel to meet immediate construction needs. Cianbro’s information technology (IT) department worked with A/Z’s telecom group to deliver network and low voltage solutions. Team members from estimating, the Cianbro Institute, and equipment group worked in the field with their tools putting the work in place. Cianbro’s human resources department also assisted Puritan with hiring efforts for the new Pittsfield facility.

The project truly has been a story of teamwork and collaboration. All stakeholders came together to meet the needs of Puritan and, more importantly, the needs of our country to battle the COVID-19 pandemic. In all, more than 650 individuals including Cianbro, A/Z, Starcon, subcontractors, engineers, and architects worked on the project to meet the July 1 production startup for Puritan. Collaboration between key subcontractors throughout Maine was pivotal to the success of the renovation. Some long-time competitors worked side-by-side to complete the facility retrofit.

Midway through design, Puritan Medical Products determined they would need an additional 9,000 square feet of production space for future machinery and temporary raw / finished goods storage. This resulted in the design team shifting gears to accommodate the future expansion in the midst of construction.

As planned, on July 1, Puritan began working in their new Pittsfield ISO-8 cleanroom producing more than 30 million foam-tipped swabs per month. After the start of production, Puritan reached out to Cianbro for additional production space as the demand for foam-tipped swabs continued to escalate worldwide. As a result, a further 6,000-square-foot production expansion was completed in combination with customizing the previously completed 9,000-square-foot expansion. This allowed Puritan to install six multivac lines, further increasing their production capacity to 90 million foam-tipped swabs per month.