Life Technologies - site visit
Alan Sneddon, Operational Support Group Manager, conducted the tour
Life Technologies - site visit |
Alan Sneddon, Operational Support Group Manager, conducted the tour |
During a visit to Life Technologies facilities at Inchinnan Business Park, Paisley, on Sept. 27, 2000, S2C2 members were given a tour of the company's cleanroom facilities. Life Technologies is home to 4 cleanroom filling suites at Class 10,000, which have filling zones at Class 100. The company's products can be filled either manually or mechanically within these rooms. .
Life Technologies is a manufacturer and distributor of cell culture and molecular biology products for life science research and industrial bioprocessing. The company offers technical expertise, technology licensing, research services, large-scale production and custom and catalogue products of virtually every description at a level that is unique in the industry.
Life Technologies has more than 20,000 customers from universities, public and private research institutes and the biotechnology and pharmaceutical manufacturing industries.
Premier technologies from Life Technologies are used in a number of applications:
For information regarding Life Technologies, please contact:
Life Technologies
Ltd
3 Fountain Drive
Inchinnan Business Park
Paisley, UK
Phone:
0141 814 6100
Fax: 0141 814 6287
It is almost exactly 25 years since we moved to our York Avenue site. Many of you will not know of our origins. The 'founder' of Envair was Peter Starkey who still lives in Haslingden. In the late 1960's Peter had been a sales rep for a company called MSA (Mining Supplies Appliances) which sold, amongst other things, HEPA filters. In around 1970 he decided that he could design and manufacture laminar flow cabinets and build clean rooms more competently than the companies he was selling to. So he persuaded a local businessman to set up an 'environmental' department in his company which was called O. Glaessner and Co. Glaessner's main business was in lighting and they occupied a prestigious showroom on the corner of Walmersley Road in Bury. They also operated an electrical contracting department and a textile machinery agency. By the early part of 1972 Glaessners had registered the trade name Envair in the UK and, for some reason, Switzerland. Unfortunately they had also run into serious financial difficulties and the bank had called in the receivers.
At around the same time, my family had just sold its business, Qualitex, who were primarily textile yarn processors, to ICI Fibres and I had decided that I did not want to spend the rest of my life in textiles. Being something of an idealist, I was looking for small businesses to support in either pollution control or medical engineering. A common contact who was running the textile machinery agency part of Glaessners introduced me to Peter and the rest is history! A very favourable deal was struck with the receiver involving just a few hundred pounds for stock, work in progress and the name Envair.
I have many early memories. One of these was of Peter trying to describe what a clean room was at our very first meeting. I was none the wiser at the end of that day, and I am not daft, but I was nevertheless most impressed with his enthusiasm. It was that that persuaded me to take a shareholding in the proposed new company and underwrite the joint and several bank guarantee. My degree is in engineering, but when I told my solicitor what I was intending to do, he said I must go in as Financial Director to protect my investment. Financial Director was therefore my first position at Envair and was also the start of my own broadening experience.
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John and Peter
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Another memory is the discussion as to whether we should manufacture or just sub-contract. I was outvoted and the decision was taken to look for a small industrial unit. The
best option appeared to be where we are now. A builder from Burnley had bought the land and was proposing a speculative development. We would have to wait until May 1973 to take occupation of this completed building which comprised just the present front offices and what is now the machine-shop. Whilst the factory was being built, the offices remained in Glaessner house and manufacturing was first carried out in a disused church-hall in the back streets of Bury and later in a disused school in Waterfoot.
The factory opposite on York Avenue was occupied then by British United Shoe Machinery. They were amazed to see a factory being built across the road. They themselves had had problems with their own foundations. So far as they knew our land was effectively quicksand and they fully expected to see our factory sliding across the road towards them.
It is said that during the second world war this had been the site of an Italian prisoner of war camp and one or two inmates may have died. This probably accounts for the ghost which has been seen or felt by several people here including George Hewson. I have not experienced it myself, but I am told that the sensation is extremely strong, that is as well as doors opening and closing without any explanation.
In 1975 we had already outgrown the existing factory and what is now the timber shop was built. The drawing office was a positive firetrap on a wooden mezzanine floor across the end of the shop over where the toilets and compressor now are. In 1979 we started to build the new extension. Unlike the earlier buildings this was to be leasehold on land owned by English Industrial Estates and not required by Lipe Rollway. We had applied to the regional office of the DTI for a particular type of grant to help with the finance. Then Margaret Thatcher won the 1979 general election from Michael Foot's Labour Party and I heard nothing from the DTI for quite some while. Eventually I received a call from the official I had been dealing with and, of course, I was desperate for news on the grant. Indeed I was desperate for the grant itself. However he said that that was not what he was calling about. He asked if we would like to buy the freehold? Thus the transition from the subsidised economy of old labour to the free-market economy of Margaret Thatcher and an early manifestation of privatisation.
Envair can pride itself on its low staff turnover and the large proportion of long serving employees. I would like to thank everyone past and present who has helped to bring the Company to its present position of enormous respect in the market place and I look forward to many more years of profit, growth and independence.
PROFILE - Jim Carmichael |
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Jim is an electrical service engineer and is S2C2's Site Visit Organiser. He is known to many because of his visits to cleanrooms to service, maintain or commission clean air equipment or rooms.
He lives in Airdrie, east of Glasgow where he grew up. He is a rare breed of person who is "time-served", i.e. he apprenticed as an electrician to trade with E J Stiell who were based in Church Street, Coatbridge. Then he gained experience with Hall Thermatank in Chapelhall, manufacturers of air conditioning equipment and got involved in air conditioning where he worked on the service side. From his early days he has worked in hospitals, pharmaceutical and health care industry as well as microelectronic industry.
He moved with Hall Thermatank to Suffolk in the 70's. Then late in the 70's he took a post servicing and maintaining air conditioning equipment in an oil field in Libya in the Sarir Desert. His wife and 2 children remained in Suffolk and he operated with a work schedule of 38 days in Libya and 28 days in Suffolk. When the children's schooling became a factor in where to live his wife pointed out the possibility of a job with Microflow. They were looking for somebody to work with cleanrooms. He met Owen Ford and decided to give up his job in Libya and base himself back in the UK. While the firm was based in Fleet, Hampshire, he moved back to Airdrie from where he originated.
He worked for Microflow who, at that time were based in Fleet, Hampshire, from 1981-87. This was his first introduction to working in clean air environment. He learned a lot when with Microflow/MDH and found this experience gave him a solid understanding of the business. He feels grateful and lucky that he met Owen Ford as it gave him a chance to work in cleanroom technology. Working in the Service Department his job involved installing, servicing and commissioning clean air equipment including cleanrooms. It took him all over the UK and into a variety of industrial settings. Outside the job, he found that other people had trouble understanding of what he did for a living! "People wouldn't understand the relevance of the clean side."
Then after 7 years he worked for Crowthorne. Both jobs were focused on Scotland and northern England. Both jobs broadened his cleanroom experience now that the use of cleanrooms expanded to other areas.
In the early 90's he left Crowthorne and joined Flo-Tech and was with them for 3 years. Sadly in 1994 his wife, Margaret died on December 31st of a burst aneurysm in the brain. She was 42 years old. His son, Gerard, was 22 and Laura was only 14 years old at the time. He comes from a close-knit family and his 3 sisters and a brother stepped in to help, along with other family members.
George Foster of H&V Commissioning offered him a position to open a clean air branch for his business. He worked with them for 5 years.
Having clocked up 20 years of experience Jim decided to start up on his own. "Clean Air Containment Services" is the name of his business and he bases himself in the Coatbridge-Airdrie area. He is out on the road a lot but has organised a business base through the Atrium Business Centre in Coatbridge. It provides him with the necessary [human] phone answering facilities and all types of office facilities. When dealing with banks they didn't seem to know what cleanrooms were nor what clean air equipment was all about. Once explained, he had no problems. He found that the references given to him to support his application made a big difference and is most grateful for the help he received in this way.
As someone who came through an apprenticeship training he feels that there is a need for a fuller education or training scheme which is more than the present one-month or less courses for testing and servicing engineers. He has seen the growth and changes in equipment design and operators' requirements and can't help feeling that the generation of servicing engineers coming into the workforce nowadays are not as prepared as they need to be. There a glaring gaps in their knowledge. Perhaps a module in a larger educational programme could be offered?
For hospitals or institutes buying equipment from sales companies, rather than from UK manufacturers, he feels there should be a minimum standard of certification available. This is because often the buyers are non-technical people, for example, accountants, who, at times, do not realise what the equipment is and usually go for the cheapest which may not meet the required specification.
He has no trouble getting work and finds "there is enough work for everybody's need but maybe not enough for some people's greed." Looking at Scotland's economy, he feels there is a regrettable short-term vision in place. Often decisions are knee-jerk ones: "one day the price is down, next day it is up" when long-term thinking is needed. Furthermore firms will often settle for the easy option. This may be the low-cost option where he feels there is a too-high trade-off. Low-budget goods or work can lead to problems and extra expenses down the line. "Going for the cheapest service is not necessarily the best and can lead to problems."
Over the past few years Jim has met a new partner called Katherine who originally came from Dundee and they are now living in Airdrie quite contented.
