Urschel Laboratories, Inc World Headquarters

Tonn and Blank has served as an adviser and contractor for Urschel Laboratories since the early 1950s.  It built a factory for Urschel Laboratories and over the years constructed 28 additions. After undergoing numerous renovations, completed by Tonn and Blank, at their current site, Urschel Laboratories, the global leader in food cutting technology, decided it was time to find a location for their new world headquarters that would house a new facility and allow them with future expansion opportunities. Tonn and Blank designed and built the massive structure and managed the massive logistics effort of moving every piece of equipment without losing a single day of production.  

The new Urschel Laboratories World Headquarters is a 373,000 state of the art facility located in Chesterton, Indiana. The $80 million dollar facility took 16 months to complete. The building sits on 160 acres which allows for future growth.

The replacement facility includes new corporate offices and replacement manufacturing facilities. The corporate offices include executive, finance, engineering, sales, manufacturing, test kitchen, studio, IT departments, a museum of the company’s products and other miscellaneous departments. 

The manufacturing facilities includes a no-bake foundry, investment foundry, heat treating and knife making departments, punch press, vertical, wet and horizontal grinding, lathe, milling, drilling, tool and experimental, sheet metal, assembly, warehousing, shipping, maintenance and other departments as well as required support facilities.

A project of this size and scope required meticulous analysis and planning. Revit, Navisworks Clash Detection, and BIM 360 Field and BIM 360 Glue were used. During the design phase, Tonn and Blank inventoried each piece of equipment (asset) which would be moved to the new facility. All assets were drawn in Revit and included the utilities necessary to run the asset. More than 500 assets

were tagged, drawn and evaluated. Using BIM technology, the manufacturing facility was designed, and equipment was placed within the model. Using our own crews, we self-performed the concrete slabs and foundations, steel siding, carpentry, millwork, machinery moving and bridge construction.

Completion Date: December 2014 (ongoing work since 1950)

Contract Amount: $80 million