New Cleanroom and Ancillary Support facilities

About the Client

Nammo Westcott is an Aerospace company specialising in solid and liquid propulsion systems for the Aerospace industry. They supply essential components to the NASA space programme through a subcontractor relationship with Lockheed Martin. It was a Nammo Westcott engine that provided the insertion burn to allow NASA’s JUNO spacecraft to successfully enter into orbit around Jupiter. They currently occupy several buildings on the Westcott Venture park and now, having signed a lease on a large new build development the have awarded Roshal with the contract to design and build a new cleanroom with ancillary support facilities.

The Brief

The client issued a User Requirement Document which detailed the various operations which would be required within the new Cleanroom along with performance criteria for temperature and humidity control along with a cascading pressure regime.
The Cleanroom will be a Class D classification and will need to be fully validated and certificated by an independent body.
Ancillary facilities in the form of a new WC block and Meeting area would be required with capacity for future expansion built in.
The plantroom controlling the Cleanroom will need to be accommodated along with an external plantroom for client facilities.

Our Solution

Our solution was to utilise the height of the new building to maximise the efficient use of the floor space to allow further expansion of client facilities and production area within the main part of this very large industrial unit.
We therefore proposed to install a structural steel mezzanine floor which would allow the Cleanroom to be built underneath and the ancillary support facilities (New WC block and Meeting Area) to be installed on top of the mezzanine.
The plantroom controlling the Cleanroom could also be located on the mezzanine floor.
Access from the existing first floor offices onto the mezzanine floor would also be required and as this would mean breaking through an existing compartment wall, then the mezzanine floor area would need to be fire protected as this would effectively became an extension of the existing compartmentation.
This was achieved by underdrawing the mezzanine floor with 1 hour fire rated cladding along with 1 hour fire rated cladding to all of the mezzanine support columns.
To complete the compartmentation a 1 hour fire rated “Jumbo Stud” partition was built along the edge of the mezzanine floor up to full height following the profile of the portal frame of the building, including a “head deflection” detail to comply with building regulations.
The WC block and the plant room were built using plasterboard and stud acoustic partitions with sound insulating suspended ceilings installed over.
Our in-house joinery manufacturing unit copied the skirting and architrave detail which had been used elsewhere within the building to ensure uniformity of style throughout.
The Cleanroom below the mezzanine floor was constructed using the Kingspan Versatile system of cleanroom partitioning with semi flush cassette glazing to windows and door frames.
The doors throughout were from the Kingspan precision range with overhead adjustable door closers and automatic drop-down seals to ensure minimum air leakage. The doors on each side of the airlock entrance and changing area were fitted with electronic interlocking to ensure the integrity of the main cleanroom would not be compromised.
The HVAC ducting system was installed within a 700mm ceiling void which was created with the installation of a SIG white cleanroom metal pan 600mm x 600mm lay in grid ceiling with “v” joints which were on completion fully sealed with white cleanroom silicone sealant.
The HVAC Air Handling Unit along with the steam humidifier plant were installed in a purpose made plantroom on the mezzanine floor with supply and return ductworks passing through the mezzanine floor through fire and smoke dampers and into the supply and return ductwork system with the ceiling void below.
Lighting was designed to achieve 500 lux at 1 metre above floor level using flat panel LED flush fitting luminaires with PIR occupancy control. Integrated emergency lighting was included as required by Building Regulations.
The floor covering throughout the cleanroom was required to be antistatic and this was achieved via the installation of Polyfloor finesse conductive vinyl floor laid onto a cross grid of copper tape set within the flexible adhesive and connected to earthing pegs at each corner of the clean room facility.

On completion of the installation full commissioning and validation took place over a 24 hour period, using independent validation and testing engineers Tecomak Ltd.
The Cleanroom was tested and fully certified as a Class D facility .

CDM Regulations

The Nammo project was a notifiable project under the CDM regulations, which means that the HSE would by law need to be informed of the project in every detail with a formal issuing of the relevant information on Form F10 document.
Roshal were tasked with taking care of all Health and Safety management and compliance issues, fulfilling both the Principle Contractor and Principle Designer roles. Roshal also took care of all local authority approval issues such as building regulations and planning approvals.

Client Feedback

Mr Gavin Betteridge was the main point of contact for the Nammo project, and provided valuable feedback and comments as follows:

“Roshal provided a thoroughly professional and quality approach to this project from the outset. Their site management team were extremely competent and kept me up to speed with the development of the project at every stage.

The quality of their work was always at the highest level and their installation teams were always courteous and a pleasure to deal with.

The fact that Roshal can take care of every detail including the CDM regulations and all local authority issues and approvals, means that as the client I can relax in the knowledge that we are in safe hands.

I would not hesitate in using the services of Roshal in the future and would recommend them as a fully comprehensive total design and build fitting out contractor”