Major Pharma Site Closedown
Project Management
Aport was approached by a major pharmaceutical customer to assist in the closedown of a large site in the UK. There were some 700 instruments that the company needed to relocate from the UK to their other sites in the US, Switzerland and Singapore.
The time frame from quotation to execution was incredibly tight but with the help and deployment of Aport’s experienced project managers we were able to put together a site team and project plan within two weeks before the relocation operations needed to commence.
Time was of the essence as the site needed to be cleared and handed over ready for decommissioning and sale. Aport had to work around the many decommissioning requirements by the various OEM’s as we packed and protected instrumentation in order to not lose any time on the project, meaning that multiple areas were packed simultaneously and often out of sequence.
Aport was responsible for packaging all the instrumentation which was pre-approved by the OEM’s and conformed to aport’s strict protocols which included:
- Bespoke wooden crates built for all bench items which included our unique double floating deck design, essentially providing the instruments with its own air-ride suspension encasement
- Each instrument was individually wrapped in a number of layers of specialist anti-static bubble wrap to provide substantial cushioning once placed inside the bespoke crate
- Once loaded into the crate the instrument was then “packed-out” by placing more loosely stuffed anti-static into the voids between the instrument and the crate to ensure the instrument doesn’t move during transit and to provide an extra layer of cushioning
- Aport then placed a shock monitor onto every crate which would quickly identify any instruments that had been exposed to transit stress above 1G including the knocking and dropping of the crate. For those instruments that contained lasers an additional tilt monitor was added to ensure that the receiver at the destination point could be sure that the instrument had been handled properly during transportation
Three modes of transport were used in all including a number of shipments by sea to the US, the use of specialist airfreight to the US and Singapore and by road utilising a fleet of dedicated aport vehicles.
Aport’s specialist administration team managed all shipping documentation and pre-clearance requirements to each of the countries being shipped to ensuring that all of the instruments passed through customs clearance quickly and efficiently for onward delivery by Aport to final destination.
All instruments were delivered on time and in perfect condition to each of the locations with subsequent projects being handed to aport by the same customer.