Modular Cleanrooms for a Compounding Pharmacy in Sandy, Utah | MFV Pharmacy

The Solution

Labs USA supplied a modular hardwall cleanroom system: two connected prefabricated structures built from insulated wall panels on a steel frame, engineered as a package and assembled inside the existing building. The panels arrive finished. There is no taping, sanding, or painting on site, so the wet and dusty part of conventional construction never happens in the pharmacy at all.

Two pass through chambers were built into the wall panels. A pass through is a small double door cabinet set through the wall, interlocked so both doors are never open at once. Materials go in one side and come out the other, which means a tray of supplies can cross from one classification of space to another without a person walking through with it and without a door opening onto the room. In a compounding pharmacy that single detail removes a large share of the everyday traffic that would otherwise disturb the controlled environment.

The two structures were laid out with different ceiling heights, so each area suits the work and the equipment above it rather than forcing one dimension across the whole footprint. Wall panel junctions were engineered as three way and four way connections where rooms meet, which is how a modular system produces interior partitions and separate rooms instead of one open box.

Sight lines were a deliberate part of the specification. Full height and partial view windows were built into the panel runs, along with a sliding window, so supervisors and technicians can see into and across the controlled areas without entering them. Standard single doors and a double door opening handle personnel access and equipment movement, and a fixed ladder gives safe access to the deck.

Above the rooms, the system uses a structural deck rather than a suspended ceiling. The deck is built from steel decking with a tempered walking surface and is engineered for a uniform live load, so it supports filtration modules, lighting, and the weight of a technician performing service. That turns the top of the cleanroom into usable service space and keeps filter changes and mechanical work out of the clean space below.

Electrical rough in was integrated into the panels: standard and quad receptacles, ground fault protected outlets, light fixtures, and switches are all part of the package, so the interior is finished rather than a shell waiting on another trade. The result belongs to the cleanroom systems family Labs USA supplies, in its modular hardwall form.

Advantage

The realistic alternatives for creating clean compounding space in an existing pharmacy are stick built construction, a softwall enclosure, or a modular hardwall system. Stick built gives permanence but costs the most disruption: multiple trades, dust generation inside an operating pharmacy, a long schedule, and a structure that cannot be moved or reconfigured afterwards.

A softwall enclosure, with curtain walls hanging from a frame, is fast and inexpensive. It suits temporary or low classification work, but curtains flex, they are harder to keep clean at seams and hems, and they do not give a pharmacy the rigid, wipeable, defensible surface it wants where sterile preparation happens. They also cannot carry a walkable deck.

Modular hardwall sits where this project needed it. The panels are rigid and cleanable like a built wall, the structure is engineered as one system with its own frame and deck, and it is demountable. If the pharmacy expands, changes what it compounds, or relocates, the rooms come apart and go back together in the new configuration rather than being demolished. For a business whose building may change before its process does, that is a materially different asset than drywall.

Labs USA specifies all three approaches, along with laboratory casework, fume hoods, and exhaust snorkels for the work that happens inside them, so the recommendation follows the process rather than a single product line.

Return on Investment

The first return on a modular cleanroom is schedule. Panelized structures are manufactured while site preparation happens and assembled in days rather than the weeks a conventional build occupies. For a compounding pharmacy, weeks of construction inside the building are weeks of constrained operation, and that constraint costs revenue that never appears on a construction invoice.

The second is trade coordination. A modular system arrives as one engineered package with its walls, ceiling deck, doors, windows, and electrical rough in already designed together. A stick built equivalent needs framers, drywall crews, painters, ceiling installers, and electricians sequenced by someone, and every handoff between them is a place where the schedule slips.

The third is the asset itself. Drywall rooms are an expense that becomes part of a building the pharmacy may not own forever. A demountable cleanroom is equipment. It can be extended, reconfigured into a different room layout, or dismantled and re erected at another address, which changes how the investment is treated when the business grows.

The fourth is service access. Because the deck is walkable and load rated, filter changes, lighting work, and mechanical service happen from above rather than from inside the clean space. Every service visit that does not require gowning up and interrupting compounding is time the pharmacy keeps.

Serving Pharmacies and Laboratories Across Sandy and the Wasatch Front

This project is in Sandy, Utah, in the south end of the Salt Lake valley, which is also home ground for Labs USA. Being local matters on a cleanroom project because the structure has to fit a real building. Slab flatness, actual clear height under the roof structure, column positions, and the route materials will take on assembly day are all things measured in person rather than assumed from a drawing.

Labs USA supplies cleanrooms, laboratory casework, fume hoods, work surfaces, and exhaust ventilation to pharmacies, laboratories, and manufacturers across Sandy, Draper, Murray, West Jordan, South Jordan, Lehi, Salt Lake City, Provo, and Ogden, and works on laboratory and cleanroom projects nationwide. The Wasatch Front has a dense cluster of pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, medical device, and diagnostics operations, and the same question comes up in most of them: how do you create controlled space inside a building that was not designed for it.

Related work includes modular cleanrooms for manufacturing and life sciences, lab furniture and casework for the interiors, laboratory tables for weighing and preparation stations, and laboratory fume hoods where chemical handling is involved.