Honeyman Group Provide World Leading Opthalmic Hospital with PW, WFI and Clean Steam System

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Located in central London, Moorfields Eye Hospital’s new state-of-the-art  pharmaceutical manufacturing facility manufactures specialist sterile products for ophthalmic use and as such constantly requires a supply of Purified Water (PW), Water for Injections (WFI) and Clean Steam for manufacturing, cleaning and sterilisation purposes.

The Honeyman Group were engaged by one of the world’s leading centres for eye health which is also the national centre for ophthalmic research, Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, to provide a bespoke solution that would manage these critical process services.  This involved the design, engineering, installation and validation of systems that are fully compliant with MHRA guidelines. 

The systems consist of three packaged plants with associated distribution networks, each operating independently within an overall supervisory control architecture.  In the first plant, raw water is purified by passing it through reverse osmosis filters and de-ionisation processes to produce Purified Water.  This purified water is used in the laboratories and also stored as feed water for two additional processes, clean steam generation and distillation for WFI, which is then distributed throughout the building to points of use.  The entire process is automated and requires minimal operator intervention.

Two challenges were overcome by the Honeyman Group during completion of this project. 

The first challenge was in the understanding of the user requirements as at project conception stage the required capacity and functionality of the system had to be developed.  Using their knowledge of the industry and experience of the typical production processes, equipment and throughput that the client was anticipating for the new facility, the Honeyman Group was able to recognise the required information to assist the client with the writing of the User Requirement Specification (URS).

The second challenge was to address the physical space constraints.  As a result of  the configuration of the city centre brownfield site housing the new facility, the plant room and manufacturing areas had to be built underground.  As such, space was limited and a large amount of time had to be spent during the design and supplier audit procedure carefully selecting equipment that was small enough to be located in the plant room but would still have the capacity to meet the performance requirements of the system.  Additionally, as a result of access and space constraints the physical installation of the system was an arduous task.  In order to transport the equipment to the plant room via the service lift, the equipment had to be dissembled and then reassembled once in location.   The Honeyman Group’s extensive knowledge of available equipment and use of 3D CAD tools allowed models of the facility to be simulated thus giving the client confidence that the project would be a success from the outset.  Additionally, proficient project management and co-ordination were vital to the success of this project as various teams were working in the build area at the same time.  “We were very satisfied with the expertise and organisation of the project management”, said Alan Krol, Managing Director of Moorfields Pharmaceuticals.

Speaking about the Honeyman Group upon completion of the project, Alan said, “We found Honeyman to be a knowledgeable organisation who could provide a complete solution to meet our needs”.