Room with a View

22.07.2015 — The tallest building in Switzerland is currently under construction in Basel and Roche will be moving in this year. Dussmann Service supports the pharmaceutical company with infrastructural facility management.

The tallest building in Switzerland is currently under construction in Basel and Roche will be moving in this year. Dussmann Service supports the pharmaceutical company with infrastructural facility management. The highest mountain in Switzerland at 4,600 meters is is the Dufourspitze and situated in the Pennine Alps. There are 48 mountains in the Swiss Alps which are higher than 4,000 meters and provide visitors with breathtaking views. They are a difficult act to follow but builders in Basel could be suspected of attempting it with the construction of the Roche Bau 1 building which, at 178 meters, will be the tallest building in Switzerland. The building, designed by architects Herzog & de Meuron is still bare brickwork but when it is completed this year, around 2,000 people will work there. The 41 floors of the earthquake-proof building will offer a floor area of 74,200 square meters, equivalent to more than 10 football pitches. The objective of the pharmaceutical company’s 550 million franc project is not to break records, says Chairman Franz Humer at the laying of the foundation stone but to bring workplaces that are currently scattered around the city together, facilitating exchange and harnessing innovation potential. The time schedule is ambitious and Roche has selected reliable cooperation partners. Dussmann Service has been supporting the company with infrastructural management since 2013. Up to 45 employees carry out traditional maintenance cleaning and are also responsible for cleaning services during ongoing construction work. Other services include material and personnel transport, provision of technical equipment and waste management which sounds simple but involves complex logistics. More than 2,000 tons of waste material is generated and disposed of in around 2,000 waste containers. Fork-lift trucks, pallet jacks and mini cranes are provided and operated by Dussmann to facilitate transport of construction materials and waste. A Dussmann Service emergency team is on standby 24 hours a day, every day, to ensure fast, flexible reaction when it becomes necessary. And there will be a huge additional job at the end of the building phase: post-construction cleaning of the entire floor area. Martin Burkart is the Dussmann Service project manager at Roche Bau 1. It is his job to plan and coordinate the more than 100,000 working hours. He also organizes training, instruction and supervision of the ever-growing team ensuring that service provision is fail-safe. “We are on standby 24/7 and can carry out ad hoc services at short notice, even during daily operations which enables us to react flexibly to client requests. This is the secret of success at Dussmann Service which has been vindicated at Roche” explains Burkart. Close cooperation and continuous dialog with the client, Roche and construction management provider, omniCon are decisive factors of efficient operation. Dussmann Service AG Switzerland provides the whole range of facility services in self-delivery from a single source. The FM portfolio includes cleaning, technical services, reception and security, catering and sector-specific specialist services such as construction logistics and clean-room cleaning. 
 

About Roche

Roche, with headquarters in Basel, Switzerland, is a leader in the research-oriented health-care sector. With the combined strength of its pharmaceutical and diagnostic divisions, it develops oncological immunological, ophthalmological and neurological medicines and drugs against infectious diseases. Roche is the largest biotechnology company in the world and the leading provider of in-vitro diagnostics and tissue-based cancer testing as well as a pioneer of diabetes management. A central strategic approach by Roche is personalized health care which aims to provide medicine and diagnostics to significantly improve patients’ quality of life and their chances of survival. Over more than a century since the company’s foundation in 1896, Roche has made significant contributions to global health. On the World Health Organization’s list of indispensable medicines, there are 24 medicines which were developed at Roche including life-saving antibiotics, malaria treatment and chemotherapeutic drugs. In 2013, the Roche Group employed 2013 people worldwide, invested 8.7 billion Swiss francs in research and development and generated a turnover of 46.8 billion Swiss Francs. Genentech in the USA is fully owned by the Roche Group. Roche is the majority shareholder of Chugai Pharmaceutical, Japan.