Specialised Industrial Facilities — Design-Build
Updated: June 2026
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 built our own medicinal-cannabis industrial complexes, 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 (for medicinal cannabis, the INFARMED / GACP context) — 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.
Frequently asked
Do you hold GMP / INFARMED certification?
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 medicinal-cannabis industrial complexes — controlled-environment buildings at scale — 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.