"We believe we have now discovered a better way of working together with contractors and controlling costs," company spokesperson Johannes Roebers told BioPharma-Reporter.com.

The world's number two biotech firm said it adopted a unique 'design-build hybrid' approach to create its latest biologic drug facility in California, US, and its efforts in doing so were recognised by the 2007 Facility of the Year award for the category of project execution.

Roebers said that the firm had been searching for a new method to combat the problems it had faced in the past with project cost and time overruns and inevitable reworkings.

Under the design-build hybrid method, the 'shell' of the facility, including the civil, architectural and structural work, was carried out via the traditional 'design-bid-build' basis, meaning that the contractors who designed the elements didn't build them - the work was instead bid out for the best price.

This is the way facilities are typically built in order to achieve the best price but that does not always end up the case due to problems often encountered between all the different parties involved along the way, said Roebers.

Meanwhile, the more complex inner-workings of the plant were managed through a more novel 'design-build approach', where one engineering company was selected to oversee all engineering performed by the design-build subcontractors in the mechanical, electrical, process and instrumentation and controls engineering disciplines.

Using this two-pronged approach, Roebers said that "accountability was clear amongst the contractors and we didn't have to do any rework. As a result, each part of the building process was on time and on budget."

"No other company that I know of has used this approach to such an extent."

The six-building, 500,000 sq. ft site features manufacturing, laboratory, office, warehouse, and utilities space, and employs 550 people. The firm is now awaiting US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) licensure in order to add a further 90,000 litres of capacity for the production of its monoclonal antibody-based cancer treatment Avastin (bevacizumab), expected by mid-year.

By winning the facility/project execution category award, which was sponsored by the International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering (ISPE), Interphex and Pharmaceutical Processing magazine, Genentech is now one of five finalists for the overall Facility of the Year Award, which will be announced during the ISPE's international annual meeting in Las Vegas in November.