Specialised Industrial Facilities: Design-Build
A controlled-environment facility is a process machine wrapped in a building, and schedule is revenue. WALLNUT designs, engineers and builds specialised industrial facilities under a single contract. Answer within two business days.
Single design-build contract
21 architects and engineers, full BIM
Licensing handled end to end
Answer within two business days
A controlled-environment facility is a process machine wrapped in a building, and schedule is revenue. WALLNUT designs, engineers and builds specialised industrial facilities in Portugal under one contract, and we have built large-scale controlled-environment complexes ourselves, so the failure points are ones we have lived, not read about.
Controlled-environment & cultivation
Cultivation and other controlled-environment buildings stand or fall on the envelope and the systems: HVAC, humidity and VPD control, biosecurity zoning, water and power resilience. We design and build the facility so it is ready to host your certification and inspection regime, building to those requirements, which is different from holding the certification yourself. Time-to-harvest and time-to-certification are designed into the programme from day one.
Why design-build for industrial
In specialised industry the building is subordinate to the process, and compliance is fundamentally a coordination problem. A single contract puts the architecture, the engineering and the construction under one accountable team; full BIM clash coordination resolves the dense services before site, cutting the field rework that wrecks industrial schedules. When the schedule is the business case, integrated delivery is not a preference: it is the risk control.
Beyond cultivation
The same discipline applies across specialised facilities: cleanrooms to ISO 14644 for pharma and electronics, agro-industrial and food production under HACCP, and logistics and light-manufacturing buildings where controlled cost and schedule decide the investment. We assess each brief honestly: some are a strong fit for integrated design-build, some are not.
Laboratories and pharmaceutical facilities
For laboratories and pharmaceutical facilities in Portugal, see laboratories and pharmaceutical facilities: design, permitting and construction.
Our work in this sector
Every one of these has a page with what we were responsible for, what we were not, and the measurements behind both.
Site photograph Two buildings, two commissions, one client — Nexzen · Pegões, Montijo
Built · Design and construction by WALLNUT
Design-led: selected work
Every project begins as a design problem, not a construction quote: restraint and material honesty over decoration, resolved in full BIM. Under a single design-and-build contract, the studio that designs it also builds it, so the design reaches handover intact. Selected work includes two completed buildings on the Nexzen pharmaceutical campus in Pegões, five floors of offices completed for Conectys in Lisbon and a 470 m² pharmaceutical head office completed in Carnaxide.
Frequently asked
Do you hold the operating certifications?
No, and we are explicit about that. We design and build the facility to meet your certification and inspection requirements; the licence is held by the operator. Our value is delivering a building that passes.
What experience do you have?
We designed and built our own large-scale controlled-environment industrial complexes, which is where our specialised-industrial capability comes from.
What does it cost?
Specialised facilities are costed against the process and the systems, not a generic €/m². See what premium construction really costs in Portugal.
Updated: June 2026