Four levers for the future of pharma
Real life science and pharma facility resilience is decided early, where site, power, water, and operations connect.
Early design choices define pharma facility resilience
Life Science and Pharma facilities take years to plan and build. The conditions they’re built around don’t wait that long.
Grid capacity that looked secure at the planning stage may not be there when production scales. Water supply, treatment, and discharge are becoming permitting and compliance risks. Regulatory expectations keep tightening. Manufacturing requirements pipelines can shift before a new facility is even operational.
The risk isn’t uncertainty. The risk is locking uncertainty in. Decisions on site, energy, water, and operations made too narrowly at the outset become challenging and expensive to unpick later.
Look at those decisions together, from the earliest stage of planning, and a facility stays adaptable and resilient for longer.
Stuck in global grid queues. Power access is now a primary risk in site selection (Source: IEA).
The four levers behind every break through
- Fact:
Site selection
Choose for what comes next
Early site selection screens out planning delays, grid constraints, and environmental liabilities before you commit capital. At this stage, project parameters remain flexible, and risks are manageable. If you overlook these factors early, external local constraints can quickly become costly redesigns and construction delays later.
- Fact:
Energy strategy
Build for resilience
Balancing aggressive decarbonisation with grid volatility requires more than basic backup generators. Long-term energy security demands early-stage efficiency, waste-heat capture, and diversified power supplies. Designing layered resilience into your utility architecture protects critical cleanroom operations when local grids fluctuate, or capacity falls short.
- Fact:
Water management
Resilience you can rely on
Treating industrial water as a single-use resource creates severe operational and compliance risks as local abstraction and discharge regulations tighten. Integrating closed-loop recycling and treatment systems stabilises your process water supply, insulates manufacturing from municipal shortages, and satisfies strict environmental permit requirements from day one.
- Fact:
Future-fit design
Design to keep moving
Just as you can update software without rebuilding your computer, your facility should adapt in the same way. Rather than planning for just one future, design your space to handle different scenarios. Combining modular layouts and digital simulations helps you use your budget wisely and change your setup without costly demolition.
Designing the future of cell therapy
The Cellerator supports the Novo Nordisk Foundation in moving treatments from the lab to clinical trials and then to market. See how we used advanced simulation to test performance before building, creating a space for both research and manufacturing, so new medicines reach patients sooner.
Access our guide to four levers for the future of pharma
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Supporting pharma and life sciences teams across Europe, the Americas, and APAC with the early-stage engineering, energy, and site decisions behind resilient manufacturing.
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Bjarne J. Rasmussen
Global Service Line Director, Life Science & Pharma
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Anders Hummer
Global Service Line Director - Industry & Infrastructure Facilities, Buildings
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