Fluor awarded $1.2B NC manufacturing plant contract

Dive Brief:

Texas-based Fluor Corp. announced this week that it has been awarded a $1.2 billion contract to engineer, build and manage construction at a $1.8 billion Novo Nordisk diabetes active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) plant in Clayton, NC, according to the Triangle Business Journal.
The manufacturing facility will be 830,000 square feet and will employ approximately 700 people when operational in 2020. The project, which should be structurally complete in 2019, is also expected to generate almost 2,500 construction jobs.
Since Novo Nordisk’s plans for the plant were revealed in 2015, Fluor has provided design services for the project, which the Triangle Business Journal called the largest life sciences investment ever in North Carolina.

Dive Insight:

Multibillion-dollar projects like the Novo Nordisk plant can have far-reaching effects on the local community and the state. Tesla is currently in progress with its $5 billion gigafactory in Reno, NV. Last December, county officials said the issuance of business licenses was up 41%, with most of those in the construction trades. In addition, local officials said the high-profile project had attracted other companies to Northern Nevada, such as Switch, developer of SUPERNAP data centers.

Homebuilders have also benefited from the extra employees tagging along with all these major companies. Approximately 11,000 new workers are expected to move to the Reno and Las Vegas areas over the next five years, which means that 40,000 new housing units will need to be delivered by 2020 to accommodate the 80,000 new residents. That number change, however, as Faraday Future, a Tesla competitor has put construction of its North Las Vegas factory on hold amid alleged financial concerns.

Fluor, based in Irving, TX, is a global construction and engineering behemoth, with more than $18 billion in revenue in 2015. The firm counts projects like the Tappan Zee Bridge and the 800-mile Trans-Alaska Pipeline System in its portfolio.

Fluor also topped the construction/engineering category of Fortune's list of the World's Most Admired Companies in February and ranked second on Engineering News-Record's list of the Top 400 Contractors in May.