AstraZeneca DISC

  • Client: AstraZeneca & Mace Group
  • Sector: Healthcare
  • Services: Firestopping & Commercial Decorating
  • Region: Cambridge
  • Size: 19,000m2
  • Project Value: £1 billion

Project Overview

The AstraZeneca DISC (Discovery Centre) is a new £1billion facility, opened in 2021, at the pharmaceutical multinational’s headquarters in Cambridge.  

Sentinel was engaged to complete the firestopping and commercial decorating throughout the 19,000m2 site, which is the joint-biggest science lab in the UK. The DISC is now home to 2,200 research scientists, working on the most advanced robotics, high-throughput screening and AI-driven technology.  

As the UK’s preferred specialist decorating and firestopping contractor, Sentinel was fully on board with the need for its work to support AstraZeneca’s Zero Carbon programme, which is committed to zero emissions by 2025.  

Accordingly, the materials used in our passive fire protection installation were selected with sustainability in mind. The DISC has since been rated Excellent by BREEAM, the world’s leading sustainability assessment for building projects.  

AstraZeneca played a key role in the development of a vaccine in response to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020-21. The development represented its biggest single-site investment, and is part of Cambridge’s life sciences cluster, Europe’s largest amalgamation of scientific expertise of its kind. The DISC supports the company’s focus on specialized and precision medicines, and its work on the next generation of therapeutics, including nucleotide-based, gene-editing and cell therapies.  

Project Brief

Sentinel worked in partnership on the project with Mace Group, the main contractor. As a specialist decorating and firestopping contractor with extensive experience, we were asked to provide passive firestopping and commercial decorating throughout the new building.  

Sustainability was a key consideration for AstraZeneca. The pharmaceutical giant is committed to zero carbon emissions by 2025 and has stated that its entire value chain should be carbon negative by 2030. As a result, it was essential that the passive fire protection solutions and commercial decorating materials used to complete our work were chosen with their environmental impact in mind. 

It was, therefore, crucial that we selected products that would play a full role in supporting AstraZeneca’s ambitions. These would include paints and coatings that assist in cutting carbon emissions and delivering other eco-friendly benefits across the finished building. 

At the same time, we were conscious of the need to deliver state-of-the-art passive fire protection solutions from the industry’s leading practitioners that would keep users of the facility safe. It was essential that our work blended with the wider project in the delivery of a building that would enable the important research carried out within its walls to continue.  

Challenges / Solution

We completed the firestopping installation for the entire building, using built-in fire protection solutions from the industry’s leading practitioners. We worked with Rockwool, a UK manufacturer of sustainable, non-combustible stone wool insulation.  

Sentinel also deployed Nullifire passive fire protection materials. Many Nullifire thin-film intumescent products are water-based, which means they have a much lower Volatile Organic Content (VOC) level than you find in solvent-based coatings.  

As well as a safer working environment for those applying the firestopping, they also deliver better ongoing sustainability performance levels.  

Our team of specialist decorators used ICI Dulux products to complete their work. These materials help to cut carbon emissions by reducing the number of VOCs used.  

The result was a solution that delivered the high levels of passive fire protection and the quality of commercial decorating required by AstraZeneca. Our selection of materials to deliver the project successfully also supported the company’s strong focus on sustainability at the heart of its research and innovation.  

Sentinel is proud to have played a significant role in the development and completion of a facility described as “a feat of environmental engineering” by AstraZeneca. 

The Result

AstraZeneca was clearly delighted with the completed DISC. Pascal Soriot, the company’s CEO, said the building “raises the bar for sustainable R&D and global collaboration across our industry”.  

He added that the facility “will allow us to break new boundaries in the understanding of disease biology, bring life-changing medicines to patients and power the next stage of our company’s growth”. 

The commercial decorating and passive fire protection services completed by Sentinel throughout the facility played a key role in supporting AstraZeneca’s ambitious sustainability targets. The DISC features 174 boreholes that provide natural geothermal energy, four hybrid cooling towers, and a ground source heat pump that will save enough energy to power 2,500 homes. It also has low-energy ventilation, high levels of insulation, and a saw-tooth roof design that minimizes energy use by allowing natural daylight to stream in.  

As a result, the DISC has been rated Excellent by BREEAM, the leading sustainability assessment in the world for building projects.  

As the UK’s preferred specialist decorating contractor, with extensive expertise in firestopping and commercial decoration, Sentinel is fully confident in its ability to meet the detailed requirements of clients of all size, including multi-national corporations such as AstraZeneca. 

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