Prefabricated Cleanrooms vs Traditional Builds: Comparing Costs, Timelines, Scalability, and Beyond

Modular construction has been around for a long time. While some historical accounts place the beginning of modular housing in 1920s and ‘30s USA, others go as far back as the 1600s – they cite the story of a colonial American fisherman who wanted to build his home with trusty English construction and ended up having a disassembled home shipped across the pond.

Regardless of the exact starting points of the modularity and prefabrication phenomena, they have certainly been around for a while. Consider the mining towns that flourished during the California Gold Rush of the 1800s. Or the mass housing solutions to the post-World War II housing crises. In recent decades, modular construction has been an answer to the problem of unaffordable urban housing.

A research report forecasts that the global modular construction market will reach a value of over USD 54 billion by 2027, growing at an annual compound growth rate of 2.9% between 2021 and 2027. As for the segmentation of this market? Well, it’s far more wide-ranging than most people believe.

Modular construction has offered a quick and cost-effective alternative to conventional houses. But this innovative phenomenon in building and construction isn’t limited only to housing. It can be (and is) applied to diverse building projects that require repeatable units, adaptability, and an accelerated timeline. It can be applied to building projects in schools, offices, and most critically, the biopharmaceutical and other industries.

Prefabricated cleanrooms or modular cleanrooms (the two concepts have some differences but are often used interchangeably) have emerged as increasingly popular concepts in the biopharma industry in recent years. They are a response to not only advancements in prefabrication and modular construction technologies but also the growing need for more environment-controlled spaces for healthcare delivery and health product development and manufacturing.

Prefabricated cleanrooms offer several advantages compared to traditionally-built cleanrooms, in terms of cost, convenience, timelines, and scalability. Modular cleanroom systems boast all the strengths of any other modular building, and then some more – strengths which drive the growing use of prefabricated cleanrooms in a dynamic biopharmaceutical market.

Cleanrooms are controlled environments, vital across industries like biopharma, aerospace research and semiconductor manufacturing. In these spaces, environmental control systems enable the regulation of temperature, humidity, contaminants, and airflow to meet specific standards.

Traditional stick-built cleanrooms are those built using conventional construction methods – think bricks and cement, put together on-site one by one like most buildings today are. Constructing cleanrooms this way takes a long time but these buildings pay you back in durability. This approach is effective for permanent cleanrooms in which you don’t predict the need for too many modifications in the future.

Prefabricated cleanrooms, on the other hand, are manufactured off-site in a factory as separate modules (as the term ‘modular cleanroom systems’ indicates). Each module can be a wall or segment of a room or an entire contained space. These components, usually housed within a shipping container, are transported to the project site, where they are connected with one another and ready to be deployed in significantly less time than conventional construction takes.

Modular cleanrooms can be scaled up with the addition of more modules and are perfect for situations that require rapid response. Due to their need for highly controlled internal environments, they typically come with integrated air handling systems, temperature control, contamination control, utility distribution, and other features for effective building management, particularly as it applies to sterile applications in biopharmaceutical production.

Before we get into the distinctions between prefabricated cleanrooms and traditional ones, let’s take a look at the general differences between the two approaches to construction.

In general, given the technological advancements available to us today, the industry recognises the superiority of modular buildings over traditional ones, at least for housing.

Studies by the University of Texas at Arlington, Arizona State University, and the Modular Home Building Association have found that modular construction projects take 40% less time to complete compared to their stick-built counterparts. Modular housing may cost up to a quarter less than traditional housing. And modular structures offer a customizability that traditional buildings cannot match – prefabricated structures can be designed and combined in diverse ways, with the configuration changeable to meet evolving needs.

That’s not all. Conventional construction—with bricks and cement, large requirements of manual labour, and extensive time spent on-site—is associated with a large number of workplace accidents. In the United States, construction accounts for as many as 20% of all occupational fatalities. Modular construction reduces that number by a whopping 80%.

Conventionally built structures are also not always very resilient to strong natural phenomena. Since modular homes are manufactured in controlled factory spaces, they can be built with advanced durable materials and have more robust quality assurance mechanisms. This evidence isn’t simply anecdotal. After Hurricane Andrew in 1992, the US’s Federal Emergency Management Agency commissioned a study into the resilience of built structures, discovering that modular structures performed far better than conventional construction framing. Moreover, in the subsequent decades, advances in prefabrication technology have made modular building materials even more robust.

This resilience to the elements isn’t only after the building has been erected. If you have a traditional construction site, with workers laying brick after brick to assemble the structure, studies show that there’s a 50% chance that the weather will play spoilsport at some point or the other. Heatwaves, intense snowfall, or heavy downpour can cause a domino effect of delays, call for the purchase of additional materials, pose additional risks to crewmembers, and ultimately impact your project budget.

Modular structures, whether they are modular cleanrooms or otherwise, are manufactured within the controlled environment of a factory. So the unpredictability that comes with working outdoors is virtually eliminated. This also helps prefabricated cleanroom manufacturers to stay on schedule and within the budget.

Finally comes the environmental impact of construction activities. Compared to conventionally built ones, modular houses have a smaller carbon footprint, producing as high as 38% fewer emissions. The environmental benefits of prefabricated cleanrooms are very similar.

We’ll build on these distinctions between prefabricated cleanrooms and their traditional counterparts in the next section of this article. We’ll address concerns specific to the biopharmaceutical industry, making sure you keep an eye out for HVAC, waste management, maintenance, and other life cycle stages as you work with your prefabricated cleanroom manufacturer.

In part 1 of this article, we explored the evolution of modular construction, the growing popularity of the approach in the biopharma industry, and how prefab structures win over stick-built ones in most contexts.

Here, in part 2, we’ll explore the specific considerations of prefab construction when investing in modular cleanroom systems.

As we’ve seen in part 1, prefabricated structures offer many benefits over traditionally built ones. When it comes to setting up prefabricated cleanrooms, however, there are some additional elements we must keep in mind. This is due to the sterile nature of many biopharma operations – prefabricated cleanrooms should be able to uphold the regulatory standards required of buildings used to research, manufacture, and/or deliver lifesaving interventions.

HVAC. HVAC (or heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) systems play a crucial role in maintaining a contamination-free environment within cleanrooms, be they prefab or otherwise. Cleanroom HVAC systems must maintain advanced filtration and air change rates that effectively eliminate contaminants, humidity levels that prevent the degradation of inputs or finished products, and stable temperatures for standardised production.

Beyond the basics regarding structural integrity, your prefabricated cleanrooms must also have effective HVAC, preferably in-built. This includes high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) and ultra-low penetration air (ULPA) filters, controlled airflow, and other environment control mechanisms.

Having these controls integrated into your prefabricated cleanrooms also means that you have a one-stop solution to any maintenance or repair issues. You don’t have to go looking for a separate HVAC contractor; the prefabricated cleanroom manufacturer will usually have the capability in-house to deal with most issues related to your cleanroom.

Waste management. Waste management, particularly wastewater management, is an important concern in traditional as well as modular cleanrooms. This is because pharmaceutical, biotechnology, semiconductor, and other industries release wastes that may be toxic to their environments and the communities that depend on natural resources in the region. If you’re constructing a traditional cleanroom, you will likely have to hire a separate wastewater management expert to ensure your systems comply with regional environmental laws. High-quality prefabricated cleanrooms, however, typically have built-in wastewater management systems which are designed to comply with environmental regulations.

Maintenance and life cycle costs. When allocating a budget to your cleanroom project, we recommend that you consider the total cost of ownership of the modular cleanroom rather than the construction cost per square foot. This is because modular cleanrooms are generally easier to maintain – their modular components and replaceable parts mean that maintenance, repairs, and upgrades require minimal downtime and lower costs over time. In the long run, using total cost of ownership as a metric to measure returns is more useful than only considering CAPEX expenditure.

Prefabricated cleanrooms vs traditional build: Schedule, scalability, costs, and compliances.