During 20 years I have operated in a wide range of work – from specialist within chemistry, GMP and IT – project management, change management and people management, to strategic work as member in senior management groups and steering committees. This is a list of some of the projects and project programs I have lead during my career.
Laboratory integration
When a new site is acquired, the pressure to get it operational is immediate — but rushing without clarity creates problems that take years to unwind. My role here was to prepare the laboratories at a newly acquired site in Ireland to meet future production and development demands, all while ensuring full alignment with the company’s quality management systems, IT architecture, facilities standards, and staffing requirements.
The work started not with documents, but with people. The site team was anxious, and understandably so — they had limited visibility into what was expected of them and were navigating a significant organisational shift. We invested time in understanding those concerns at the management level, and then helped the team find their own path through the challenges rather than simply dictating solutions. That approach built trust quickly and unlocked real momentum.
On the technical side, we applied value stream analysis to get a clear picture of the current state and developed concrete, actionable plans covering facility rebuilds, equipment investments, training, and headcount. Complex problems were simplified into clear recommendations — and where change was needed, the case for it was made with data.
Ivar brought a highly structured and methodical approach to the work and was especially strong at creating clarity in a complex environment. He was excellent at turning complexity into clear, actionable plans — reliable, well-organised, and played an important role in keeping the track moving forward while ensuring good alignment across stakeholders
Process standardisation
Global complexity doesn’t solve itself — someone has to map it, own it, and drive it forward. That was this engagement. I led the design and scoping of a global standardisation programme covering core operational processes across multiple production sites in Europe and the United States.
The starting point was always the business strategy. Rather than standardising for the sake of it, the programme was designed to maximise value realisation in the shortest possible timeframe — which meant making tough calls about what to include, what to defer, and how to sequence the work. That required thorough stakeholder analysis across functions and geographies to understand the real business drivers, build genuine organisational buy-in, and ensure that the right people were making the right decisions.
Ivar consistently demonstrates exceptional stakeholder management, leaving no stone unturned to secure alignment and commitment. He combines a genuine curiosity with a structured approach, asking the right questions and ensuring that both people and perspectives are seen and understood. A true asset to any complex programme.
QC 4.0 Program Management
Novo Nordisk had ambitious plans for its global quality control laboratories — but ambition at scale without governance leads to duplication, misalignment, and wasted effort. That was the starting point. Multiple areas were independently pursuing similar problems, building redundant systems, and competing for resources without a clear common direction.
I led the development and governance of a global portfolio of digital and operational improvement initiatives across the QC organisation. This meant building the strategic framework from scratch: defining a shared mission, clarifying roles and accountability, establishing governance forums, and creating a lean, prioritised project pipeline that focused energy on initiatives with the highest cross-site impact.
The approach was data-driven throughout. I built a lightweight but effective reporting and dashboard setup — integrated with existing systems to avoid creating yet another redundant tool — giving senior leadership clear visibility into what was being invested in and why. The result was a shift from local, siloed solutions to scalable platforms with genuine global reach.
Beyond governance, the portfolio included some of the most technically challenging initiatives in the laboratory space: QC Connectivity, Data Warehouse, Automatic Agar Plate Reading, Automatic Evaluation of Chromatographic Data, Automatic Approval workflows, Modular Dockable Laboratories, Reagent and Pipette Calibration Robots, and Automatic Planning systems.
The most important projects — those with the greatest business value — got the focus they deserved and were delivered successfully.
Paperless QC
Laboratory environments in pharma are among the hardest places to drive digital transformation. Complexity is high, regulatory requirements are strict, and the history of failed IT initiatives creates a culture of scepticism. “It’s impossible” wasn’t an uncommon starting point for this project.
The key to making it work was changing the model. Rather than running a traditional large-scale IT programme, I introduced an approach that stripped out complexity, embedded small dedicated teams close to the actual users, and focused relentlessly on fast, tangible results. Value stream mapping was used to identify the highest-impact processes to tackle first, and agile methods — Scrum and Kanban — kept delivery cycles short and feedback loops tight. Change management wasn’t an afterthought; it was built into the structure from the start.
The outcome was a paperless, digital laboratory delivered at a pace that surprised everyone — including the people who had been most sceptical. The shift from “we can’t do this” to “we nailed it” was real, and it set a template for how to run transformation programmes in regulated environments.