IMEG provided design for the University of Iowa’s new College of Pharmacy building, which obtained LEED Silver certification. The 200,000-sf facility includes research and teaching laboratories, classrooms, student interaction spaces, offices, and conference rooms. The building also houses the University of Iowa Pharmaceuticals (UIP) sterile manufacturing suite, the largest university-affiliated, FDA-registered pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in the U.S.

The 13,000-sf sterile manufacturing suite is required to meet Current Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP) regulations and ISO clean room specifications. To ensure full understanding of and compliance with these requirements, IMEG collaborated with UIP and the pharmaceutical consultant hired to design the manufacturing processes. As a result, the HVAC design provides the required air change, filtration rate, and pressurization for the suite’s ISO Class 8 and ISO Class 7 spaces. The infrastructure also supports an ISO Class 5 isolator-based manufacturing process housed within the suite. A dedicated AHU serves the entire suite with HEPA-filtered air, and design control sequences accommodate room-by-room vaporized hydrogen peroxide decontamination.

The MEP design also provides deionized water and passivated stainless steel piping for the suite’s water-for-injection (WFI) stills and clean steam system to meet the purified water requirements of the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP). Engineers also designed and specified a building control system for a validated environment. This maintains and documents room sensor readings of temperature, pressure, and humidity levels in order to meet FDA regulatory standards.

In addition to providing MEP design for the highly complex sterile manufacturing suite and the entire building, IMEG also provided structural, fire protection, and technology design.