Building 
outside the box

The reality of a factory for food production is that it is there to keep the machinery dry, says Mark Reeve. As md of Chalcroft Construction, it is Reeve's job to build food factories. But Reeve believes that the building is almost the last thing you should look at.

"You would look at the people movement first, the product movement and the machinery, and you would optimise that. Then you would construct a building around it."

Building and construction for the food industry can be challenging, says Reeve. "There are many small project managers, architects and engineers, all with their own ideas. And best practice is not well shared, so some clients do not understand what is being used or how the construction industry is moving forward."

As a result, says Reeve, he finds that all too often full consideration hasn't been given to the factory building. There have been a number of plants that Chalcroft has completed and handed over that have had to be run from generators because there was no power supply in place. Experience teaches that it can take a long time to get statutory services laid, he says.

So Reeve's advice is to involve the building company in your shiny new factory design as early as possible. "We have done best when we have been brought in early and been used to add value at an early stage and bring our raft of experience from across the sectors."

John Moxon, business development director (designate) at Clegg Food Projects agrees. For a lot of companies, a new factory is a once-in-a-Iifetime project, he says, so they haven't built up any experience. Like Reeve he has horror stories to tell. "We have got to the stage with a building where someone has come to deliver some process equipment an oven, a conveyor and there wasn't anywhere physically for them to get it into the building."

So involve your construction company early, he says. "We are up to speed on current thinking because we are constantly doing it. One of the first things we do when anybody starts talking to us is ask questions. What's this building going to do; what's going in there; when is it arriving; how big is it; who's going to install it? We ask those questions because we have lived through the experience of having to cut out a piece of wall to get machinery in."

Moxon's advice is to stop thinking of a new building as a sequential process design, go out to tender, get a builder in, build it. "If you do that, one step after another, it can be a long drawn-out process. But you can compress that by involving your construction people early on and designing your new factory with 'buildability'.

'Buildability' is the watchword​

"Buildability is a word we like to use. If you design a factory with your eyes open and with information, the chances are you will make it easier to build, safer to build, and safer to operate. And if it's safer for us to build, the chances are it will be safer and easier for people to use and they are the ones in there for the next 20-30 years, after all."

Over the past five years or so there haven't been any really major changes in construction materials and the way food factories are put up. There has been a move to prefabrication using the latest fire-resistant mineral wool insulated sandwich panels supported in steel frames. These provide an internal clean, hygienic finish and an external weather proofing all in a single skin. The benefits are speed of construction, reduction in cost because you are building only one wall; reduction in voids which can harbour infestations, and ease of maintenance.

Another trend is to erect the steel support structure on the outside, says Moxon. This gives a clean, straight, flat surface inside for your food manufacturing environment. "All the space inside the building is useable you don't have columns that get in the way."

But despite all the advantages of prefabricated insulted sandwich panel construction systems, Geoff Daren, commercial director of MTC Insulation Solutions has a warning. "One thing people tend to forget is the detailing of the junctions between surfaces and floors," he says. "People will employ a contractor to put the panels up and a flooring contractor to put in the floor, but then forget about the junction between the two. And that's where you see some poor design voids that allow water to settle; problems with bugs."

But Daren is an advocate of another trend putting in flat ceilings in food factories. "A fairly large bakery I was talking to spends around £15,000 a year cleaning the steelwork in its roof because it gets covered in flour. So they are looking at putting a ceiling over the production area as a cost-saving measure. It will also allow them to manage airflow better, and give them a cleaner environment generally."

Another driver behind the move to put in ceilings is energy saving, says Daren. "By lowering the ceiling you are lighting less of an area. Also, if you have a temperature-controlled area, the better the ceiling insulation the less energy you spend removing heat."

But he has a caveat against the rush to ceilings. "People can put in ceilings that are too low. A tall ceiling gives a nicer working environment particularly in a temperature-controlled environment. Also, food factories tend not to have any windows to prevent solar heat gain. So if you have a low ceiling, it can feel claustrophobic in a production area."

Moxon at Clegg Food Projects is also an advocate of internal ceilings. "In old factories you can see up to the roof. You can see all the rafters, and all the pipes and the wires. But if you put in a ceiling all the services that supply equipment wires for lights, pipes for water and refrigerant are outside of the hygienic box. This gives you much more room inside the building to make your food and keep it clean. And if you have got all this equipment outside of the box you can maintain it more easily and get access to it without having to shut down your production lines."

Simulation made simple​

But the one area of factory design and construction that has changed very little over the years is the plans. It is still not unusual for a food company to have to try to imagine what its new factory will look like from enormous bundles of architects' and engineers' paper drawings and specifications.

There are plenty of computer aided design (CAD) tools out there. But these really do little more than replace two dimensional (2D) paper drawings with 2D electronic versions. And when it comes to working out how to get a piece of equipment in or out, then a lot of the pipework and services won't be shown on simple plan drawings. They are also difficult to interpret by non-engineers and non-architects the people who will be running the factory.

Wouldn't it be nice if you could build an electronic three-dimensional (3D) model of the factory to be able to actually see what it will look like? Wouldn't it be nice, too, if you could walk through it on the computer screen to see where all the kit fits, spot any hidden problems, and show management and operators how it will all work?

There are systems that will let you do this, but the usual 3D CAD modelling packages cost a fortune and gobble up incredible amounts of computer power. They are fine if you want a 3D model of a new oil refinery or chemical works from scratch. But what about a medium-sized food factory where the only bespoke items will usually be the processing equipment? Everything else, from pipes and valves to steelwork and conveyors, will be standard catalogue items?

Bill Wilkins, technical sales manager at CAD Schroer, the computer aided design specialist, believes he has an answer in his company's MPDS4 factory 3D-design system. Instead of starting from scratch and modelling every nut and bolt within a new factory design, MPDS4 pulls electronic design data on standard items, such as pipes and conveyors, as and when it is needed from electronic catalogues. This saves enormous amounts of computing power.

CAD Schroer has recently started a contract with a major UK food manufacturer to use MPDS4 to design a new factory. "They want a system to help them visualise what they are trying to do partly for their own management who don't understand technical drawings, and partly for the operational guys on the shopfloor who are going to be building, maintaining, installing and working the equipment. Having a 3D model is much more visual," says Wilkins. "They also want to figure out how they are going to breakdown their existing plant, how they are going to get it out of the building, how they are going to get the new stuff into the building. Where they need to lay major services like gas, electricity, water and so on."

But the end point goal is for the client to have a living design of the plant, says Wilkins, so that over the years whenever they make changes they can keep a living model of what they have got. FM

Key contacts​

■ CAD Schroer 01223 460408


■ Chalcroft Construction 01553 776543


■ Clegg Food Projects 0115 8413121


■ Krones 00 49 9401 702222


■ MTC Insulation Solutions 0121 5068991