As a project manager, I am responsible for the execution of projects from A till Z. Projects range from complete polymer production plants to single components for the polymer production business. As a project manager, I take over full responsibility of the schedule, budget and quality of the project right after the sales contract has been signed until the full scope (often including commissioning and a performance test) has been delivered. Day to day activities include management of engineering, contract and vendor management, reporting, scheduling and cost management.

Defining and setting up the go-to market strategy for thermoplastic piping systems in the chemical process industry. Determine the global focus within the chemical process industry segment in alignment with senior management. Refine the global strategy in alignment with regional stakeholders and build competence within the segment across all regions.Bring market needs from key players in the chemicals segment back into the organization and introduce these ideas into the innovation chain. Determine the market potential together with the sales organization and build the business case.Prepare input and content together with the product managers for the marketing department to create market segment relevant marketing material, including events and conferences.

Returned to original role before being delegated to China (see further below).

Delegated to Shanghai to lead the design, construction and commissioning of the chemical catalysts division's first full-scale process catalyst manufacturing plant in Asia. Total investment cost for this fast track project was 130 Mio Euro. This was the largest single investment project ever executed by the division.As the technology manager, and later as project operations manager, I focused on the technical and operational side of the project. In this capacity, I was one of the gate keepers for project scope to assure the requirements from the business unit were met. With the division's existing plants well over thirty years old, a technology and process control upgrade to world class standards had to be made. This was one of the core tasks that I dealt with over the various phases of the project.With little local know-how available on chemical catalyst manufacturing technologies, I managed suppliers proposals and solutions together with our internal procurement and legal divisions, as well as with engineers from both our corporate engineering division as well as our engineering partner. The suppliers' technology had to fit the needs of manufacturing as well as the ability to be integrated into the overall plant control system.With this facility being the first Asian production unit for our division, I was one of the core contributors to the build-up of our local organization and the setup of the operating fundamentals.At the end of the construction phase, as commissioning manager, I prepared and maintained planning, led the commissioning team and served as the single point of contact for senior management regarding safety, planning, budget control and risk mitigation.

Identifying global production capacity shortages and define capacity optimization opportunities. Such optimizations could for example be capacity expansions via capital investment projects or by product portfolio optimization. For capacity shortages, I prepared the business case in collaboration with business and product managers and defined the scope for the capacity expansion proposal for board approval. Two of these business cases lead to execution of the proposed project: one in India (1.7 Mio Euro) and one in China (130 Mio Euro). Both of these projects were lead by me.

Application of the magnetic caloric effect was a novel and innovative idea as alternative to conventional cooling techniques. As project manager, I was managing the design phase of a pilot plant producing sample material for application testing with business partners. Key tasks were defining the scope, budget and planning for this pilot plant.

Delegated to South Africa, assisting our customer in a new FT catalyst plant start-up.As project engineer I supervised the licensor (BASF) interests during the startup of a new full-scale catalyst plant start-up at our customer. Core responsibilities were achieving plant capacity, product quality and functionally and hierarchically manage five delegated internal operators.

Project engineer for FT catalysts Capital investment brownfield projects, licensing technologies and project management for customer owned catalysts.

Plant optimization, process safety, utillities, modeling, project engineering, commissioning

As a CFD engineer, I participated in a European project investigating the possibilities of an electro-chemical production route of steel directly from iron ore.