CRB welcomes veteran engineering leader as new senior director of client services for SlateXpace
CRB, an international provider of sustainable engineering, architecture, construction and consulting solutions to the life sciences and food and beverage industries, has announced that Kris Desmet has joined the company as the new senior director of client services for SlateXpace.
Desmet is a veteran engineering leader whose operations and capital project experience includes senior leadership positions supporting multiple life sciences technology platforms including cell culture, plasma fractionation, purification, and gene therapies. At CRB, he will be responsible for ensuring SlateXpace modules integrate seamlessly into client operations. SlateXpace is CRB’s platformed modular solution enabling multi-modal manufacturing via highly agile, adaptable, scalable and resilient suites that allow manufacturers to campaign between modality-specific process platforms.
Desmet has more than 20 years of experience in the life sciences and food & beverage industries, including a recent tenure as head of engineering at Takeda’s Thousand Oaks, California, manufacturing site where he led a team of over 120 engineers, technicians, and consultants responsible for all engineering, maintenance, CQV, automation, and capital project activities. Before that, Desmet held the global position of director, front end engineering & design at biotech companies Shire and Baxalta.
At CRB, Desmet will report to Sam Kitchell, the company’s senior vice president of emerging business operations. Desmet will focus on incorporating owner’s needs related to automation, commissioning, qualification, validation, start-up, and maintenance into the development of the SlateXpace platform. Working closely with other members of the SlateXpace leadership team, he will also establish service offerings for ongoing operational support of modules in the field.
“I am extremely delighted to be joining CRB and taking on this new role because it allows me to pursue my passion of driving innovation to support the patient community.” Desmet said. “I’ll be able to leverage my operational background to significantly improve the client experience, provide faster project delivery, and generate greater flexibility and value for clients.”
The addition of Desmet to the SlateXpace leadership team further deepens CRB’s investment to better meet client business needs and to strengthen CRB’s results-driven commitment to world-class customer experiences.
“As we continue to grow our experience with ONEsolution project delivery and listen to our clients about what they need to succeed, we are hearing loud and clear the desire for greater speed, flexibility, and repeatability from their investments and more complete service offerings,” Kitchell said. “Kris’s background leading engineering inside life sciences manufacturing companies for both capital project work and ongoing operations gives him a deep understanding of clients’ business needs and significant insight into the key success factors for delivering and operating technically complex facilities.”
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