Tums GMP

An existing 70-year-old, 5-story manufacturing plant in the heart of Downtown St. Louis was the setting of this highly complicated building upgrade. This $14 million upgrade of GlaxoSmithKline’s Tums manufacturing center modernized many of its existing systems. Complicating the project was the fact that this facility manufactures 100% of the Tums in the world, meaning it operates 24 hours a day during the week and 12 hours per day on weekends.

This facility’s manufacturing processes and schedules required the new systems to come online quickly and work with precision. Therefore, icon Mechanical served as commissioning manager and design/build mechanical contractor. During the project, icon’s meticulous and detailed commissioning management program ensured that the systems would come online and function as designed.

icon was responsible for designing, installing and commissioning a 200-ton chilled water system, and a fully redundant pumping system to safeguard from disruptions that may interfere with production. In addition, icon installed a vacuum transfer system to pull the granule formula throughout the lines, in lieu of the existing pneumatic push system that blew granule throughout the plant.

icon also retrofitted three product silos and installed five new ones. The most complicated challenge was removing the roof to install the fourth-floor silos…since this was an existing building there were no large openings to utilize while bringing in mechanical components.

Commissioning Manager for:

• CHW Plant
• (6) Air Handling Units
• Granule Vacuum Transfer System
• (2) House Vacuum systems

Design/Build Contractor for:

HVAC Systems

• 200-ton Redundant CHW Plant
• (6) Air Handling Units

Process Systems

• Granule Vacuum Transfer system
• (2) House Vacuum System
• Product Silos