Dairy Processing - September 2021 - 58

FOOD SAFETY
Building for the
FUTURE
Construction on new processing facilities is done
with hygienic practices and growth in mind.
by Kristen Putch | kputch@sosland.com
T
he decision to build a new dairy processing facility is an
opportunity to design a plant suited to specific needs for a
company. A well-designed plant must facilitate production
operations, minimize material handling and maintain flexibility of
the operation for alteration and expansion.
The requirement of utilities such as water, refrigeration,
electricity, etc. is carefully estimated while planning a dairy plant.
The design depends on capacity, product mix, size of equipment,
workspace to be kept and future expansion requirements. There
is no one blueprint for the design of a dairy processing facility; it
varies from plant-to-plant.
" The first thing ... more than design and construction, is really
the process, " said Forrest McNabb, president of the National
Food and Beverage Group for Big-D Construction, Ogden, Utah.
" All of the builds and design of plants solely revolve around the
processing. So, until the processing is identified and laid out,
everything else is secondary to that. "
JUMPING OFF POINT
The starting point for any facility is identifying what regulations
and guidelines apply to the build, starting with the federal
or government regulations. The key one being the Food
Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), but also include PMO, the
pasteurized milk ordinates, and 3-A Sanitary Standards, among
others. Producing dairy products that meet dairy and cheese
standards with 3-A components and PMO-compliant practices
58 SEP 2021 | DAIRYPROCESSING.COM
are crucial for manufacturing safe and high-quality products.
These regulations don't layout how exactly to design a plant, but
rather provide the guidelines.
" You want to make sure that you really keep track of the local
and state guidelines, " said Greg Marconnet, vice president of
the food and beverage group at Mead and Hunt, an architectural
engineering company based in Madison, Wis., which designs
food plants. " Some of them vary just a little bit, but it's important
to know that before you start designing your plant. "
Simply making the decision about where the site acquisition
lies and how it affects the operation of the plant has an
immediate impact on the future of the operation.
A green field site gives a company the option to build a new
facility on empty space. A brown field site, however, might
already contain buildings on it making it necessary to work
within the those parameters and try to take advantage of the
setup, where possible.
" The optimum build out of the project is what will the
site accommodate, so the entire journey of the design and
construction process has to be based on a master plan, " McNabb
said. " What do you want this thing to look like five years down
the road, 10 years down the road? You want to have the longterm
approach to designing it. "
For example, when considering the size of the industrial fluid
waste going out of a building - were the lines sized properly to
accommodate all the future expansions, not just the current
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Dairy Processing - September 2021

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