John Sisk & Son: Delivering projects for pharma world leaders
"We've constructed in excess of €3bn in Life Sciences facilities across Ireland, UK and Europe, many of which have been part of significant US FDI investment programmes," reveals Tom Wall, MD of Sisk’s Life Sciences & Technology business.
John Sisk & Son has been operating in the Life Sciences sector for over 40 years.
A significant proportion of these projects have been US FDI investments which remains a key strategic business focus into the future.
Sisk has amassed a significant portfolio of experience, working with 14 of the top 20 global pharma companies, going on to build lasting relationships with many of them.
Here we talk to Tom Wall, Managing Director of Sisk’s Life Sciences & Technology business.
Tom Wall
Managing Director of Life Sciences and Technology, John Sisk & Son.
Living in Co Wexford, married to Rose, with three girls, Abby, Leah and Lily.
I joined Sisk directly after graduating from college, beginning in the UK in 1995. I returned to Ireland in 1997 and commenced my relationship with the world on Life Sciences on a project in Ringaskiddy, Co Cork. Early in my career, I was extremely fortunate to have worked on some major Pharmatech, Biologics and Medical Devices projects. I also spent a number of years managing a newly established energy and process business in the UK before re-joining our BioPharma team in Ireland in 2015.
In 2022, I was appointed Managing Director of the Sisk, Life Sciences & Technology Business Unit, with a primary objective to both develop and grow these areas. Our Business Unit has comprehensive national coverage with senior members of our leadership team based in our offices in Cork, Limerick, Galway, Sligo, Dublin and Waterford.
A key component to Life Sciences for me is about the people, not only the patients whose lives we seek to save or improve, but also the people we work with including our clients, the design teams, our supply chain, specialist services and the many specialist vendors that service the industry. It is vitally important to me that we apply the Sisk core values of Care, Integrity and Excellence in all of our activities and the services we provide to ensure that we build and maintain trusting relationships.
We also continue to upskill our people to keep up to speed with these rapidly changing industries, ensuring that we provide our clients the optimum service, from concept stage right through to qualification of their facilities across all the geographies we work in.
There are a number of things that set us apart from our competitors, but the most important one is our people. We have retained a significant core who have over 20 years of service with the company. We are a family-owned business and this ethos flows into our project teams where they look out for each other and strive towards the same goal; to help our clients and deliver medicines to patients who need them as quickly as possible.
Since 2000 alone, we have constructed in excess of €3bn in Life Sciences facilities across Ireland, UK and Continental Europe, many of which have been part of significant US FDI investment programmes in Ireland. Sisk are a relationship-focused organisation and I take pride in being the current custodian of our partnerships with multinationals, which goes back many decades. We have worked with many leading global pharma, medical device, micro-electronic and beverage companies providing us with a wealth of experience and capability.
Another key differentiator for me, which complements our specialist industry skills, from project controls to commissioning and qualification, is that we have never lost the ‘Builder’ mentality. As Construction Manager for the world’s leading pharma and medtech clients, this is a badge we carry with pride.
It has been refreshing to hear from a number of Global Engineering VPs, who say they see the merits of ‘Construction Led Project Delivery’ where the primary focus from the outset, is always delivering in the right sequence to support start-up and drive a design delivery to match this.
Like any business we take great pride in recognition and awards, I am particularly proud that Sisk have been the Construction Management Partner for the projects that won the International Society of Pharmaceutical Engineers (ISPE) award for Global Project Execution in 2021 and 2022. This demonstrates that our project delivery capability in Ireland is among the best in the world.
There has been significant changes in the Life Sciences Industry over the past 25 years, with advancements in automation, robotics and artificial intelligence platforms, monitoring the manufacturing process and predicting outcomes. Looking at the shift from pharma-chem, progressing to large molecule biologics, optimisation with single-use systems and continuous manufacturing processes. We are now very much in the era of personalised medicines in the cell and gene space and Sisk is very fortunate to have been involved in a number of these facilities, including our first in Ireland which we recently completed.
We are also currently delivering two very large CAR-T Manufacturing facilities. The potential for these treatments to fight cancers in the near future is mind-blowing. What is even more exciting is the ongoing research to create allogeneic processes to bring these amazing treatments to many more needy patients by utilising one donor’s T-cells to cure many patients.
The medical device world is also moving at amazing pace and some examples that come to mind are 3D printing technologies for replacement joints, digital monitoring systems, combined with medical devices and robotic surgery systems. The list just goes on and it is fascinating to view these evolving advances and innovations when I visit our clients’ facilities.
The main feature of evolving technologies from a project delivery perspective is the changing nature of the facilities we provide and the varying controlled environments and utilities necessary for the manufacturing and filling or packaging processes.
We are active in Ireland, UK, The Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and Croatia, having recently completed work in Denmark and prior to that in Germany. We have delivered projects in Israel and provided both construction and tech transfer support to clients in Spain.
In the BioPharma world our projects include large-scale API projects, BioManufacturing Suites, Laboratories and Distribution Facilities. As I mentioned we are very active in the Cell & Gene space and also a number of vaccine facilities including some covid facilities recently. In the Medical Devices world, our projects include replacement joint manufacturing facilities, contact lens manufacturing, drug delivery components and stents.
We are seeing new technologies influencing all aspects of project delivery and this is now also starting to reach into the traditional paper-based wet signature world of regulatory compliance. We are in the middle of our first large scale fully paperless project turnover programme which is going really well. Additionally, Our Commissioning & Qualification team not only promote efficient leveraged strategies but have delivered fully digitised Qualification and Validation. This is something many believed only a few years ago could never happen, but we now see a rapid movement by our clients towards this space.
Societal Influences are also to the fore now, with a particular focus on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI). We are very fortunate as a family business that these topics have been on our agenda for many years. We are also seeing major demand from our clients for more sustainable construction methods including Modern Methods of Construction (MMC). Sisk believes that building the infrastructure of the future means doing so sustainably.
By far the most significant emerging trend is the focus on net zero and ongoing carbon reduction in construction activities, embedded carbon and long-term operational costs. Having launched our 2030 Sustainability Roadmap, Building today, Caring for tomorrow, we have already started meeting key milestones in this journey to reducing carbon. Our 2030 Roadmap outlines an ambitious set of targets and actions, aligned with UN Sustainable Development Goals.
We have many initiatives that are reducing construction carbon, we are now actively working with our clients to assess embedded carbon and using this information to challenge and inform design strategies. We also work closely with our group colleagues Sensori FM to seek their ideas on optimising carbon reductions in facility operations, both new and with retrofit solutions.
In the short term, I see a strong and exciting pipeline of activity and despite global concerns, I remain optimistic that the continued investments in R&D by the industry, the track record of successful delivery and the skillsets in Ireland will sustain a solid pipeline of investment in Life Sciences in the medium term.
For further information, visit www.johnsiskandson.com.
