Controlled Environment (Cleanroom)

Askon serves the microelectronics, semiconductor, biotech, pharmaceutical, food, and automotive industries in the design and construction of cleanrooms and dry rooms.  Our staff has extensive experience conceptualizing, integrating, designing, selecting products and finishes, constructing, budgeting, and scheduling new construction as well as retrofit projects.  Our collective expertise encompasses semiconductor chip factories, research facilities, cell culture suites, aseptic fill suites, and battery manufacturing facilities, just to name a few.

We have significant expertise in code studies, process development, build clean protocols, budgeting, and constructability reviews.  Each member of the Askon staff is well versed across the entire breadth of our services.  

Decades of experience and expertise coupled with 3D modelling, ensures we will be there to assist you every step of the way to project success, interpreting your brief and advising you effectively on the best solutions to meet your needs.

From design and build, project management to EPC and EPCM, ACMV and building services, maintenance and refurbishment, you can rely on Askon to deliver the best in modular design and turnkey projects for cleanroom construction, laboratories, R&D, containment / evaluation facilities and suites.

Investment Planning Step-By-Step

CAPEX investment planning starts with a feasibility study in cooperation with our customer in the so-called pre-engineering phase.  A crucial part of pre-engineering consists of setting up user requirements for effective, safe and hygienic manufacturing operations based on preliminary risks identified in processing, the targeted products and their intended use.

Feasibility Study

The first step in the process of working on your facility is to understand your ambitions, aims and technical requirements as part of a feasibility study.  We will assess key project outcomes before presenting solutions-based advice that brings your ideas to life.  We will examine with you all possibilities at this stage, including assessing existing site locations, whether to extend and refurbish existing facilities, or build a new one.

Together, we will consider project teams, schedules and other pertinent matters – all part of a comprehensive feasibility design process that will:

• Identify product design requirements
• Identify facility options and constraints
• Outline a regulatory strategy
• Develop design and identify technologies
• Profile benefits, the cost risk and timeframes
• Confirm outputs (identifying one or more viable options)
• Identify user requirements specification

The above process paves the way for an initial project brief, undertaking feasibility studies and assigning a project team that sees your ideas become reality.

Concept Design / Conceptualizing

Askon’s design team has the experience to provide value-engineered, sustainable, solution-driven concept designs to meet all necessary functionality and commercial requirements.  Our collaborative approach sees us draw on internal cost, safety, construction, scheduling and health and safety resources to deliver an added value single source solution.  We can also consult with third parties such as local planning authorities when appropriate.  At a glance, our consultant team will:

• Develop engineering options
• Develop work / design to mitigate risk
• GMP and HSE control and philosophy
• Output, single technology option selected, costed with risk mitigated
• Provide buildability and construction logistics
• Identify constraints and opportunities
• Offer procurement options
• Develop a programme and phasing strategy

You can be assured that Askon has your design requirements covered from the start.

Technical Design

At Askon, we guide customers through the design cycle, assisting them to realize their vision before deploying project management expertise and turnkey services to deliver state-of-the-art cleanrooms and complex process systems on time and within budget.

Once concept design is agreed, we will refine plans, draw-up specifications and prepare estimates to move the project to the next stage.  The scope of detailed design covers 2D and 3D modelling, procurement plans and project costs to describe all the main components of the construction and how they fit together.  At this stage we will:

• Finalize drawings, P&IDs, layouts and elevations
• Project delivery philosophy
• Specify main and minor plant items
• Prepare tender enquiry documents for work packages
• Prepare project execution plan
• Prepare control estimate
• Create output, complete design and work packages for construction

Good Engineering Practices – Our Promise to You

Askon’s way of working complies with Good Engineering Practices that ensure time and cost savings in design, commissioning, qualification and validation of completely new or modified facilities.  We are able to establish and maintain project documentation that is both technically of a high standard and that is valid throughout the whole project.  This project documentation forms the backbone of the successful life cycle management of the process plant and has an effect beyond the time when the project is completed.

Environmental Orientation

Increasingly stringent environmental legislation requires consultants with special environmental expertise.  Askon has integrated environmental thinking into its core competences.  This holds true regardless of the industrial area or product and service offering.

Lean Construction Management

Great work begins with great plans, and during the preparatory phase of construction we ensure that all parties involved in the joint planning session for customer, planners and contractors.  At the start of installation on site, we effectively apply a continuous cycle, adjusted to the complexity of the construction task, the upstream and downstream trades, the time constraints, the logistical, spatial and other basic conditions.  To regularly monitor the project’s overall progress, we always start our week with a review of our work to date, and we hold morning stand-up meetings daily.  With clear structures, value-driven processes and efficient cycle review, we create the optimal surroundings for the site team to focus on essential tasks.  In this way, we not only ensure the joint achievement of the goals we have set, but also go a long way towards achieving them.

Features:

• Comprehensive view of planning and execution processes
• Clocked work organization throughout the entire construction
• Recognition and avoidance of wastage
• Continuous improvement process (CIP) during the construction
• Predictive process control

Additional Benefits:

• High degree of transparency for customers at all times during the construction process
• Customer oriented, value generating process
• Guarantee of the best work result possible
• Adherence to agreed costs and schedule
• Enhanced logistics due to a streamlined material flow
• Stabilized operational procedures to improve effectiveness

Services:

• Moderation of the common planning session with all participants at the project’s inception 
• Visualization of the construction process
• Creation of weekly reviews and daily huddle meetings
• Management of site logistics, deadlines, budget and quality
• Support from planning to billing
• Kick-off meeting and introduction to lean construction management principles for all stakeholders
• On-site consultation with the construction team.

Build

Design, build and construction of state-of-the-art facilities within highly regulated sectors is a specialist skill, where detail is key.  That’s why you need the confidence and assurance that your supplier has your best interests first and foremost.

At Askon, you will benefit from a dedicated project manager, who will be your single point of contact and drive your project from start to finish.  Supported by an experienced team, their focus will be to deliver your investment safety, quickly, and within budget.  They will ensure that it is constructed to the highest possible standards and provides optimum use when it comes on stream.

Efficiency is the key to securing speed of project delivery, so from proactive mobilization to interactive PDRs, everything we do for you is underpinned by pre-fabrication and leading-edge construction techniques.  Our unsurpassed attention to detail throughout the construction process is complemented by an open and honest commercial management approach that keeps you up to date and fully informed through the timely exchange of clear and concise information.

We are fully committed to maintaining the highest environmental, health and safety standards.  This is based on safe working systems, close engagement with the supply chain and investment in training at all levels.  Services include:

• Fully integrated project delivery
• Exemplary Health & Safety culture and systems
• Principal contractor
• Delivery options: EPC, EPCM or Client Representation (Owner Engineer)
• Packaged procurement approach
• Concurrent off-site fabrication
• Full site construction services
• Commissioning and Validation
• Cost Management
• Risk assessment and management processes

Commissioning and Validation

Askon understands the demands of working in a highly regulated and complex market sector.  We follow the Current Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP) and comply with Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations where validation and quality assurance drive best practice.

A structured approach, which flows throughout a project from design and build through delivery and installation to final commissioning and planned maintenance, leads to final validation and handover of your facility.  Our four-stage validation master plan has been developed to ensure project success – nothing is left to chance:

Validation:

• Maintained throughout the entire project lifecycle
• Identifies scope, objectives, roles and responsibilities

Impact Assessment:

• Review qualification requirements with customer
• Ensure commissioning and validation efforts are focused
• Enable the design process to include qualification requirements

Validation Controls:

• Procedural controls agreed by Askon and Customer
• Documentation to be capable of integration with existing commissioning and validation procedures

Validation Execution:

• Project approach including progress reporting
• Integration of vendor testing and commissioning data
• Reduced duration and increased efficiency

Customized Maintenance

Askon’s planned customized maintenance department assures hygienic, sterile processing environments and manufacturing facilities operate at peak performance over their lifecycle.

Once your facility is commissioned and handed over, Askon provides all your customized maintenance services for cleanrooms, laboratories, environmentally controlled systems, aseptic manufacturing suites, ACMV systems, water systems, hygienic pipework and processes systems, electrical, control and instrumentation as well as cleanroom validation, testing and control calibration.

Askon’s planned maintenance department of skilled engineers will also report on any performance problems with equipment that needs to comply with regulatory requirements and provide options for repair, modifications or upgrades.

Use of Askon’s planned maintenance on a regular basis can eliminate costly downtime, plant and process failure.  This is not limited to Askon designed and built facilities and systems, we can also provide planned maintenance for existing facilities.

If you have a cleanroom construction project in mind, contact us to discuss how Askon could assist you.