Church & Dwight Company

The Church & Dwight Company is a leading manufacturer of household products with a large manufacturing complex in Syracuse, NY. The complex has been in operation from the late 1800s to the present, with a multitude of interconnected structures having been added to the site at various times.

When the company decided to vertically integrate the manufacturing of liquid detergents in this facility, EI Associates was selected to design and construct the revamp/expansion project. Each part of the process required design development or modification including raw material delivery, packaging, and manufacturing of the bottles for the detergent. Efficient operations were a key aspect of the design. Two adjacent buildings now house the new process and blow molding equipment; the detergent mixing process is in a high bay structure that once held two large boilers. A new tank truck unloading station was built separately, with a new structural steel pipe bridge to carry the raw materials across an existing rail spur and into the receiving and storage tanks. A complete plastic bottle blow molding capability was also part of the project.

Early in the project an in-depth review of the company’s goals determined that a “fast-track” approach was called for. EI pulled many of the construction related activities into the design phase for parallel execution, shortening the start-to-finish time substantially. Estimating and scheduling were done as the design phases were completed and long-lead instrumentation and equipment bid packages were prepared and sent to prospective vendors for pre-purchasing. In addition to the equipment, twelve separate bid packages were developed covering all trade work for the construction phase of the project, and bids were solicited and contractors selected well ahead of the start of actual construction.