North East offsite specialist, Merit, is challenging traditional construction procurement models to deliver the cleanest, safest and most competitive projects. The company has transformed itself into a technology company using innovation and engineering to design and build bespoke buildings offsite using a unique Design for Manufacture (DfM) strategy.
The strategy was developed after the company challenged its own capability in offsite construction, which led to the development of its unique multiservice pre-assembled modules (PAMs) technology. It is an approach that has resulted in significant expansion to meet rapid business growth, with a pipeline of bids now in excess of £100 million.
Capacity at its factory in Cramlington has recently been doubled again after a previous increase of 40% earlier in the year.
Merit has secured an impressive portfolio of new contracts in recent months, particularly in the healthcare and life sciences sectors. Recent new business wins include a contract to deliver the third phase expansion of the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult (CGT Catapult) manufacturing centre in Stevenage, further increasing the capacity of the facility which plays a crucial role in bringing advanced cell and gene therapies to patients. The new contract is the company’s second project for CGT Catapult. Last year, Merit completed construction of the expansion phase of the manufacturing centre in Stevenage using the offsite PAM approach to deliver offices and six grade-C cleanrooms, with significant cost, programme and quality benefits.
Merit has built four turnkey decontamination facilities in the UK for STERIS in recent years and has just been awarded a contract to deliver a fifth new Decontamination Super Centre in Chessington. The new facility will consolidate healthcare services for a number of NHS Trusts including surgical instrument sterilisation, medical device decontamination and surgical instrument repair. The team has also started work on a new sterilisation facility next to the Northumbrian Specialist Emergency Care Hospital at Cramlington for Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust. It will disinfect and sterilise medical equipment for use in surgical and medical procedures for hospitals across the region.
“The expansion of our factory is part of our continued investment in a strategy that puts us at the forefront of innovation in construction,” says Tony Wells, Managing Director at Merit Group. “Our proprietary technology combines advanced offsite manufacturing with the technical expertise to deliver complex solutions in significantly shorter build schedules.
“We combine the advantage of Design and Build and single point of responsibility for design and cost risk, with self-execution of the technical parts of the project to reduce project schedule and cost. Our expertise in design and offsite manufacture reduces overall project ‘Time to Use’ by half while at the same time achieving improved quality, reliability and certainty of validation. We have adopted a zero-carbon strategy that eliminates fossil fuels from our projects, helping clients to address the challenges of climate change by creating sustainable solutions.
“We are experts in the design and manufacture of bio-safety and infection control facilities. We’ve used our experience, knowledge and understanding to develop proven designs that achieve MHRA and FDA regulatory approvals, removing significant risk for our clients. The response to COVID-19 illustrated how innovation and offsite expertise can deliver temporary healthcare facilities quickly. But the clearest lesson from the pandemic is the need for greater flexibility in hospitals to accommodate sudden surges in patients while at the same time meeting all the stringent infection control requirements.
“There is no reason why permanent hospital buildings shouldn’t be built using offsite technology and incorporate the necessary ventilation and bio-safety technology to adapt quickly from general medical use to ICU in a surge. We have been working on a range of new solutions specifically designed to meet the needs of the healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors that incorporate our DfM technology.”
Since the onset of the Coronavirus crisis, Merit moved quickly to adapt its proven designs to create solutions for mobile COVID-19 testing laboratories, vaccine manufacturing facilities and bio-containment suites that can be constructed in a matter of weeks. Merit’s house specialist design team support the manufacturing process and the company has an established capability in the production of bespoke PAMs for most of its projects at its manufacturing facility.
Expert teams work collaboratively with clients to support process layout development so that it can be fixed and the design finalised quickly and efficiently. In the early stages of a project, BIM is used to bring walk through capability allowing clients and immersive experience. Using 3D BIM technology for design and space planning creates the opportunity to integrate M&E services unobtrusively into the space. As technical details progress, we incorporate clash detection and element scheduling techniques to simplify coordination, ensuring smooth progression to site. The PAMs are precision-engineered and tested in a controlled environment before installation on-site reducing the construction programme and associated costs while ensuring consistent high quality.
“Our supply chain is made up of a small number of partners who have all worked with each other before and engender a strong sense of trust and understanding,’’ adds Tony Wells. “This collaborative approach ensures the focus is on delivering the best win-win solution for all. The DfM approach typically means that construction layout drawings are entirely un-necessary as PAMs are modelled in an entirely different manner with standard designs. This saves our clients future time and costs in our drive to achieve a 50% reduction for a project ‘Time to Use' compared to the traditional approach.”
Merit’s focus on new thinking and innovation also takes on the challenges the traditional approach to climate change and delivering zero carbon emissions. The company has applied the intelligent use of new technologies, renewables, heat pumps and heat recovery systems to create zero carbon emissions in industrial environments, helping clients address the challenges of climate change. This approach, in parallel with its offsite total solution, eliminates the use of fossil fuels from the buildings it constructs. Its application has already seen one client achieve carbon zero emissions status for a facility designed and built by Merit, reducing energy consumption revenue costs for them by over £1.6 million over ten years.
This achievement of climate change targets requires different thinking: “All too often the industry sees carbon reduction as something that will cost more money,” says Tony Wells. “But we adopted a starting position of ‘carbon zero’ that made our design teams think differently. The result is invariably the opposite: a carbon neutral environment that adds value by delivering savings over the lifetime of the building.”
Merit’s innovative approach combines innovative thinking with a zero carbon emissions commitment to deliver significant capital and running cost savings and is at the heart of the company’s continued success across the UK for clients that include the NHS, Cell Gene Therapy Catapult, GSK, Lifescan and Rolls Royce.
For more information visit: www.merit.co.uk
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