Advanced Manufacturing Sectors
Tetra Tech combines engineering precision and a multi-disciplinary approach to deliver future-forward advanced manufacturing solutions.
Tetra Tech’s ability to merge deep technical expertise with innovative, sustainable solutions, tailored to each industry’s most complex challenges sets us apart. Our teams employ strategic design principles and technologies that enhance value and performance, and our Leading with Science® approach, to turn vision into engineered reality efficiently, safely, and responsibly.
Automotive Electric Vehicle (EV) Battery
Tetra Tech supports battery manufacturing with specialized architecture and engineering from cleanroom design to environmental control. We design EV battery manufacturing facilities for dry rooms, battery production lines, and automated high-volume manufacturing, incorporating controlled production, scalable operations, and future expansion.
Our work supports dry rooms, cell assembly, material handling, utility coordination, and efficient production layouts and our solutions prioritize fire safety, moisture mitigation, and energy efficiency, driving cost-effective and sustainable production.
Chemical
Tetra Tech delivers tailored facility design and engineering for chemical processing, hazardous materials handling, and process-intensive manufacturing. We focus on safe operations, efficient production, and reliable process performance. From handling hazardous materials to corrosion control and infrastructure, we ensure efficient, resilient operations with advanced, multidisciplinary expertise.
Our work includes spaces and infrastructure for specialty chemicals, batch processing, process utilities, material handling, and plant expansion.
Defense Industrial
Tetra Tech delivers advanced engineering for defense and aerospace operations with demanding performance and security requirements. Our work supports classified production, controlled access, robust utilities, and mission-critical infrastructure. We integrate energy efficiency, digital tools, and environmental solutions into manufacturing design to enhance operations, meet regulatory goals, and ensure precision and resilience worldwide.
Food and Beverage
Tetra Tech utilises decades of experience to engineer high-performance food and beverage facilities that support hygienic production, efficient workflows, and regulatory compliance. We optimize processes, utilities, and energy use to deliver sustainable growth through LEED-certified designs, production line upgrades, and cold storage innovations.
Our services include design for sanitary processing areas, packaging environments, cold storage, food-safe operations, and washdown-ready infrastructure.
General Manufacturing and Mining
Tetra Tech supports industrial and mining operations with integrated design, automation, and environmental services. We design durable industrial facilities for advanced production, plant modernization, and automation-ready operations and mining support, maintenance, repair, and heavy equipment operations. Our work includes assembly, fabrication, production line integration, service bays, fabrication areas, support spaces, and infrastructure built for demanding use.
We help clients boost efficiency, meet compliance, and integrate renewable energy through data-driven, resilient infrastructure solutions.
Pharmaceutical
Tetra Tech designs facilities for cGMP production, cleanrooms, laboratory environments, and regulated operations.
Our pharmaceutical facility design supports clean operations, controlled environments, and regulatory compliance. Our experience includes cleanrooms, laboratory spaces, production suites, clean utilities, and infrastructure for reliable pharmaceutical manufacturing.
Semiconductors
Tetra Tech offers end-to-end design for semiconductor and research facilities including cleanrooms, microelectronics production, and precision utility infrastructure. Our facility design supports contamination control, stable environments, and high-performance manufacturing.
Our services span cleanroom and power systems, process cooling, infrastructure for wafer fabrication and tool integration, MEP design, and tool layout, optimizing performance, sustainability, and production capacity for high-tech manufacturing environments.
Warehouse and Distribution
Tetra Tech designs logistics-driven warehouse and distribution facilities that improve efficiency and scalability. We integrate AS/RS systems, optimized dock layouts, and energy-efficient climate control to support high-throughput, automated operations.
Supporting the Development of Advanced Manufacturing facilities
Read more about how we support clients through the design-bid-build process for new facilities and major upgrades.
Addressing Client Challenges
Advanced manufacturing projects often require major decisions before the production process, equipment package, or facility design is fully defined. Tetra Tech helps clients address these issues during front-end loading and front-end engineering design, by identifying the decisions, constraints, interfaces, and dependencies that could affect capital expenditure, schedule, permitting, or production readiness.
Common challenges include:
- Limited or delayed electrical utility capacity
- Incomplete process-equipment loads and connection requirements
- Changing production flow, takt time, or material-handling requirements
- Brownfield conditions and undocumented existing utilities
- Construction within active manufacturing environments
- Long-lead electrical, mechanical, and process equipment
- Environmental permitting, air emissions, and wastewater constraints
- Compressed schedules tied to production-start commitments
- Coordination between the owner, original equipment manufacturers, contractors, and design team
- Facility flexibility for future products, processes, and production volumes
Site Selection and Infrastructure Readiness
Tetra Tech helps clients evaluate whether a candidate site can support the proposed advanced manufacturing facility before major land, infrastructure, or equipment commitments are made. Our role is to provide a clearer understanding of what each site can support, which infrastructure improvements may be required, and which risks should be addressed before the final selection is made. Our site readiness reviews include:
- Electrical utility capacity, service voltage, interconnection schedule, power quality, and required upgrades
- Natural gas availability, pressure, capacity, and extension requirements
- Water supply, quality, reliability, treatment needs, and Water Use Intensity, or WUI
- Wastewater capacity, discharge limitations, pretreatment requirements, and permitting
- Stormwater management, flood risk, wetlands, and drainage constraints
- Transportation access, heavy-haul routes, rail service, employee circulation, and site logistics
- Geotechnical conditions, grading, earthwork, and foundation implications
- Environmental constraints and permitting pathways
- Campus expansion potential and future utility corridors
- Rough Order of Magnitude, or ROM, cost, schedule, and site risk comparison
- Where appropriate, Battery Energy Storage Systems, Combined Heat and Power, and other resilience or bridging-power strategies
Brownfield Modernization and Plant Expansion
Modernizing an operating manufacturing facility must go beyond simply designing new construction. Tetra Tech’s teams help clients minimize disruption to production and reduce the risk of unplanned outages during the upgrade through field investigation, laser scanning, business information modeling, virtual design and construction, existing-condition verification, phased design, shutdown planning, temporary utility design, and construction sequencing. Our approach focuses on:
- Maintaining production during construction
- Identifying existing utility and structural limitations
- Coordinating shutdowns, outages, and tie-ins
- Developing methods of procedure for critical activities
- Planning temporary systems and utility bypasses
- Managing hazardous materials and occupied conditions
- Sequencing demolition, construction, and equipment installation
- Protecting personnel, equipment, and active operations
- Resolving undocumented field conditions early
- Supporting phased commissioning and return to operations
- Four-dimensional building information modeling to connect the design model with construction sequencing and outage planning
Fast-Track Project Delivery
Manufacturing projects are often driven by a fixed production-start date. Tetra Tech facilitates fast-track delivery by aligning front-end loading, front-end engineering design, procurement, permitting, construction, equipment installation, and commissioning from the start of a project. Our goal is to ensure scope, decisions, responsibilities, and interfaces are actively managed, so issues are resolved before procurement and construction commence. Our approach includes:
- Early development of the owner’s project requirements
- Early preparation of the basis of design
- Design package sequencing
- Early civil, structural, and utility packages
- Long-lead equipment identification
- Vendor information schedules
- Early permitting and Authority Having Jurisdiction coordination
- Phased construction documents
- Design for manufacture and assembly, prefabrication, and modularization reviews
- Startup, factory acceptance testing, and site acceptance testing, planning
Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA)
For Advanced Manufacturing Facilities, DfMA can identify components that can be standardized, prefabricated, assembled off-site, and installed in repeatable sections. Tetra Tech evaluates DfMA and modern methods of construction, based on transportation, site access, labor availability, design maturity, procurement timing, quality control, and installation sequence to identify where off-site manufacturing, can improve schedule reliability, quality, safety, and installation efficiency. Potential applications include:
- Mechanical, electrical, and plumbing, utility racks
- Electrical skids and power-distribution assemblies
- Pump and treatment skids
- Mechanical equipment modules
- Process utility distribution systems
- Repetitive production-support spaces
- Modular electrical and controls rooms
- Standardized equipment connection details
- Repeatable facility layouts
- Preassembled service corridors
Utility Infrastructure
Advanced manufacturing facilities can place substantial demands on electrical, mechanical, water, and process utility systems. Tetra Tech plans and designs utility infrastructure to support normal operation, startup conditions, peak demand, redundancy, equipment diversity, and future expansion. Our teams evaluate available capacity, forecast future demand, identify single points of failure, and develop phased infrastructure improvements aligned with production plans. Our designs include:
- Electrical substations and distribution systems
- Emergency and standby power
- Battery energy storage and distributed-energy systems
- Central utility plants
- Chilled water and process cooling
- Steam and hot-water systems
- Compressed air, clean dry air, and specialty gases
- Process water, reverse osmosis, deionized water, and water treatment
- Industrial wastewater and pretreatment
- Sitewide utility distribution, metering, and monitoring
Connect with us. Reach out to our experts in advanced manufacturing solutions.
