Solar panels and naturalized roofs are now standard on many buildings of the Novartis Campus.
Published on 17/05/2022
When the passenger wagons of the Trans- Siberian Express roll leisurely along the tracks of Moscow’s Yaroslavsky station – a majestic building in the Art Nouveau style – time appears to stand still. Pulled by a huge electric locomotive and decorated in the Russian national colors white, blue and red, the Soviet-built carriages evoke a sense of times past and boundless adventure.
Completed as early as 1916, the world’s longest railroad line not only attracts travel enthusiasts from all over the globe. The 9000-kilometer line stretching from Moscow over the Ural Mountains and across Siberia to Vladivostok also serves as a major freight route, playing a pivotal role in cross-border trade.
During the turmoil of the 1990s, the Transsib, as the route is also known, fell into decline as the country was hit by a severe economic crisis. Yet, with China’s rise as a major economic powerhouse and following the electrification of the entire network in 2002, it experienced a stunning revival, growing into one of the world’s busiest trade routes. Increasing freight from the Far East is now being carried via the Transsib to Europe, in addition to valuable raw materials extracted in Siberia and exported all over the world. As a matter of fact, the steel beams used in the Pavillon also arrived by Transsib and ship.
No cut corners
The construction of the Pavillon came at a time when the coronavirus pandemic was disrupting global supply chains. The crisis was further exacerbated in March 2020 when the giant cargo vessel Ever Given ran aground in the Suez Canal, blocking one of the world’s busiest shipping arteries. The construction industry wasn’t spared these developments either, as Reto Gisiger, who heads the Pavillon project, came to experience firsthand. Although he has had to deal with difficult situations time and again in his long career, the pandemic proved a unique challenge for the veteran engineer.
“It was an exhausting time because we had to grapple with major procurement problems,” Gisiger recalls, who had been involved in the construction of several Campus buildings before the Pavillon. “The steel shortage, in particular, gave us a hard time, not least because production capacities were scaled down significantly due to lower demand.”
Completing the challenging project on a tight schedule under such circumstances was no easy task. Yet Gisiger kept a cool head, instructing his team to intensify the search for the urgently needed material to drive construction forward.
Eventually, Gisiger and his team found what they were looking for in China, the world’s number one producer of steel. However, the struggle was not over, as another obstacle soon arose. Container congestion and jammed ports – largely owing to the Suez Canal calamity – were causing a major slowdown in maritime logistics, preventing the steel beams from being delivered on time by sea.
“Given the situation, we were forced to think outside the box and look for alternative transportation options,” Gisiger says. “Initially, someone on the team picked up on the idea of airlifting the beams to Switzerland. That’s when I pulled the plug.”
Gisiger was adamant about a sustainable solution with as little impact on the environment and climate as possible. As such, his team then opted to explore the possibility of shifting to rail, which would reduce transport-related CO2 emissions by a factor of 10 compared to air freight.
Soon after Gisiger’s team had commissioned a logistics company to organize the rail transport, the first freight trains headed to Europe with the coveted cargo – first traveling across the Mongolian steppe and the Siberian wilderness before being loaded onto ships flowing up the river Rhine in Germany.
“It is crucial to uphold the principle of sustainability and not lose sight of the environment, even under pressure,” Gisiger explains. “Even though the CO2 reduction resulting from our switch to rail freight is relatively small compared to the total greenhouse gas emissions of Novartis, we have nonetheless managed to send a strong message to the industry while taking another stride toward carbon neutrality.”
