The ideal project manager is extremely patient, has nerves of steel, self-confidence, and a feel for diplomacy. Their mindset is somewhere between that of the Dalai Lama, Buddha, and the Pope, and some knowledge of depth psychology certainly doesn’t hurt either. In reality, such miraculous creatures are rather rare, but Salvatore Mobilia – deliberate, at peace with himself, and technically adept – is well on his way. After five years as Glatt’s front-line project manager for pharmaceuticals, he’s seen all kinds of things, and when he starts to discuss internal details, he reveals years of project experience.
Time-to-market is getting shorter
The latest project in particular is a tough one, and the challenges he has had to overcome over the past three years exemplify the demands on supplier companies, which have become much greater in recent years. “Facility designs are becoming more complex, and implementation time is tighter,” Mobilia explains. While it used to take five years from groundbreaking to the commissioning of the plant, today this amount of time is almost inconceivable: The plant has to be in place within two to three years at most. Every day that a new active ingredient is not on the market recovering its development costs represents lost income. At Glatt, too, the way projects are handled has therefore changed in recent years. It used to be that after the contract was signed, there was a handover meeting where the project manager got all the information and took over the project – only then did the project manager have the first contact with the customer. This is different today, says Mobilia, and also necessary because the basic conditions have changed. “Especially with complex projects, it’s important for the project manager to be at the table during the bidding process to provide technical advice,” he emphasizes. Among other things, this involves discussing risks with the customer and understanding exactly what goals they are pursuing with the investment. “All the points that are discussed here then flow into the project management,” Mobilia explains.
No project without risk – talking about this is important
The topic of project risks in particular should not be underestimated, Mobilia warns. Fast track was the standard before – today it’s super-fast track, and there is not much room for maneuver. For the supplier, this means delivery times of a few weeks and a correspondingly tight schedule, into which the subcontractors also have to be integrated. It is symptomatic in the pharmaceutical industry that investment decisions for new construction, conversion, or expansion projects – particularly for new active ingredients – are being made much later than they were a few years ago. Often the go-ahead is not given until the approval phase, when it is certain that nothing will go wrong, and then everything has to happen very quickly. The management sets an aggressive schedule, which creates high time pressure for all parties involved from day one. Anyone who has ever been involved in a pharmaceutical project can imagine what this means for the classic phases, starting with project definition in basic engineering, through detail engineering, procurement and construction, qualification, validation, and commissioning. This also increases the supplier’s responsibility to coordinate planning and construction properly and, despite the time pressure, to complete the plant on the date requested by management. The supplier’s work becomes particularly exciting during the detailed engineering phase, when the specifications and requirements are drawn up and compared. For the equipment manufacturer’s project manager, it’s the beginning of a demanding time, because this is when exactly what the plant should look like is determined. It’s nice when the pharmaceutical customer’s project team has had enough time to think in detail in advance about how they envision the system and can provide the supplier with precise information. “In the meantime, we experience more and more frequently that the customer hardly finds time in their daily business to plan the project cleanly in terms of basic engineering,” Mobilia reports. The idea of being able to work through all project phases sequentially should be forgotten quickly. “Often, orders are triggered by the engineering company before the design freeze is complete,” Mobilia says. If there is any sloppiness here, it can happen that the equipment manufacturer finds this out during the installation on site: Oops! The space is much too small for the system that has been ordered. Or 50 meters of pipeline suddenly becomes 100, and a stand-alone unit becomes a complete line with working platform and WIP lines. It would have been nice to be present at the conflict talks to determine how the error came about and who ultimately will pay the extra expenses. This has all happened before, says the project manager. Glatt too has learned the hard way. This makes it all the more challenging to exclude such errors as much as possible from the outset of the project. “One of our important goals, therefore, is to make the project transparent to the client. With 3D drawings, for example, we manage to adapt to the customer very early on and visualize their plant at an early stage,” Mobilia explains. The concept is perfect when the client nods their approval during the design freeze.
Dream team for a successful project
And how do you manage that? Four pillars, Mobilia believes, make for success: Leadership, technical and social competence, and a highly motivated team that is capable of making its own decisions and also sometimes works night shifts. The overall picture and goal must be clear to everyone involved. The project manager holds everything together: Technology, interfaces, economic aspects, and people, all while operating in an international environment. All of this makes each project unique and turns a client into a satisfied customer.
Questions were addressed to Salvatore Mobilia, project manager at Glatt
The team makes the project
Mr. Mobilia, after 12 years of experience as a project manager in international projects and with the most diverse types of customers, what causes projects to fail?
Salvatore Mobilia: There are many reasons why projects do not run well, or unplanned problems arise, and therefore that projects cannot be delivered on time or within budget. This is often due to a lack of agreement, misunderstandings in communication, different interpretations of a specification, and even cultural differences. What is not clear at the beginning can only be corrected afterwards with significant effort. If room heights are not correct, or if piping is not planned, the engineering company and supplier have to reschedule at great expense, and the project managers have to resolve the resulting conflict together.
Pharmaceutical companies hardly ever do their own planning anymore; instead, they assign this task to an engineering company. What does this mean for a technical supplier?
Mobilia: Today, engineering companies often take on the projects as general contractors because pharmaceutical companies do not have their own resources or expertise for the time-consuming and complex projects. Pharmaceutical companies focus their resources on their internal experts, who are then assembled into a team on a project-by-project basis. As a result, suppliers are confronted with several interfaces and must coordinate this well in order to take all concerns and wishes into account. This requires a high level of communication from us so that no information is lost.
And when do projects succeed?
Mobilia: In my experience, a lot actually depends on the cooperation and mutual understanding of all stakeholders. Over the past few years, we’ve learned a lot about how to handle projects, and several points crystallize for me: Communication between all parties involved on equal footing is very important. The supplier has technical expertise, and the other parties should acknowledge this. This includes the advisory function, but also saying no at the right time. The project manager has to not only coordinate externally, but also be able to delegate tasks internally to the team. Especially in large projects, friction arises when all communication goes through the project manager. It then quickly becomes a bottleneck in terms of time. We have had good experience with letting the specialist departments clarify detailed issues with each other. We place our trust in the team, the team handles the project, the project manager keeps the threads together. And the rules of the game, both internal and external, are very important: Who communicates with whom, everyone collaborates actively, everyone is responsible for the project’s success. Because our motto is: On time, on budget with a happy customer.
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