McKinley Building Corp. has completed a landmark project that will enable a locally grown company to expand both in size and scope.
 
Earlier this week, McKinley officials announced the completion of a new industrial building for Quality Chemical Laboratories (QCL), a contract chemistry services company. The 110,000-square-foot facility is located near QCL’s existing building in the North Chase Parkway Industrial Park, visible from the I-40 freeway. It will double the laboratory’s operational space.
 
After a selection process that ultimately led QCL to choose McKinley Building to do the construction, the project kicked off in April 2020 with a target of having the new facility ready for occupancy in early 2024, according to the news release from McKinley Building Corp. That goal appears to be achievable, according to the release. But it has been a complex project.
 
“To accommodate QCL's manufacturing needs, the building required creative planning from the McKinley Building team for the plumbing, mechanical, and electrical (PM&E) components,” the release stated. “The project was a highly complex design/build, and McKinley Building performed extensive modeling during the planning phase while collaborating with Brian Dineen, Facilities Engineer at QCL.”
 
Dineen, quoted in the release, commented that McKinley Building adjusted as details became clear.
 
"There were a lot of unknowns at the start of this project, and they adapted with ease," he said.
 
The new industrial structure offers a wide range of features, including over 15,000 square feet of ISO 7 and 8 modular clean room space, two robotic aseptic filling lines within ISO 5 isolators, a sterile water system for use on the lines and 7,000 square feet of supporting analytical laboratories.
 
Since its founding by Yousry Sayed in 1998, QCL has grown steadily and established a 100-plus customer base for its services in raw material and compendial testing, finished product testing, large molecule testing, product development, and clinical trial material manufacturing and packaging. With the addition of the new facility, the company plans to enter a new realm: the sterile production and packaging of injectable drugs.
 
While work on the building began in the early days of the pandemic, the timing in at least one respect was fortunate: McKinley Building secured the steel for the framework before production shutdowns and shipping slowdowns caused construction delays and boosted prices, the release stated.
 
Although McKinley’s work is finished, QCL will need to equip and stock the building, efforts that will likely take some months. Officials said this week they are not ready to comment on the next phases of the project nor on the number of new jobs the expansion will create.