February 2017

Bringingtechnical knowledge to life

Remember the brainy kid you sat next to in school? Well, she’s working for us now. And she’s made a living out of turning complex challenges into quality solutions.

At NNE, we provide engineering and consulting services for customers in the pharma industry – one of the most regulated industries in the world. Our 3,000 projects a year cover just about everything: from advising on the production of monoclonal cancer-fighting antibodies, to erecting the most advanced facilities imaginable. But whatever the project involves, we’re always up for the most extreme of engineering challenges.

Read on to find out more about who we are as a company and what it’s like to be employed at one of the most specialised companies in the pharma industry. If you like variation in your work life, and are looking for a community of helpful, ambitious colleagues, with a world of develop-ment opportunities, we’re confident that you’ve come to the right place.

Devoted to pharma,skilled in engineering

Home to around 2,000 talented and ambitious people, NNE is a playground for engineers who work hard to deliver the right answers to complex questions. Profes-sional experts are the backbone of our company, and our culture of teamwork and passion for problem solving are at our core.

We should warn you, though: we’re a bit single-minded. Whether we are engaged in building entirely new facilities, advising on reconstruction or delivering in-depth consult-ing services, we always operate within our very own niche of pharma engineering.

Our projects mean that we often operate under tight deadlines and sometimes almost impossible demands. But we work together and share our knowledge across disciplines and long distances – and that enables us to solve the unsolvable. And although what we do is serious, we tend to have a lot of fun doing it.

Pharma engineering challenges know no borders, and nei-ther do we. We offer you the chance to travel and work on projects in countries around the world for a shorter

Teamwork and passion are the name of the game

or longer period of time. So don’t expect your colleague to come from the same part of the world as you – but do expect him or her to speak the same professional language. And to be just as passionate about creating stand-out solutions as you are.

From the project site to the board room to the football field, our people never stop broadening their professional hori-zons. When you work with us, your learning will accelerate, your career will grow, and your limits will be stretched – but you won’t face any challenge alone. Every day you’ll work in an ever-changing, project-driven environment alongside a team of some of the most skilled and passionate experts in the world: your colleagues. And we are always on the lookout for sharp new minds to join us.

So if you feel like joining a tribe of helpful and fun-loving experts, want to bring your technical knowledge to life, and strive for the extraordinary in all you do, then you might be just the one we’re looking for.

Will you be the next to join our team?

Mastering the mechanics of life science Lars Olsen is a global technology partner at NNE. With his vast experience in the pharma industry he is one of the top experts in pharmaceutical packaging processes and serialisation, and he uses his knowledge to assist global pharmaceutical companies with their anti-counterfeit efforts.

LARS OLSEN• M.Sc. in mechanical engineering from the

Technical University of Denmark• Joined NNE in 2005• More than 25 years of experience from production

and project execution within the pharma, biotech and medical device industries

PHARMACEUTICAL MANUFACTURING IS DONE in very different ways around the world. When I visit a new site it is often far from how I imagined it and it is extremely interesting to see. I recently did a three week tour across the world inspecting a customer’s facilities. On a trip like that I work on the site all day, and then I analyse the data at night in the hotel. I get to do a little bit of sightseeing but the days are long and on the flight home from a trip like that, I’m exhausted and look forward to seeing my wife and kids.

COUNTERFEIT DRUGS ARE A PROBLEM to many industries and manufac-turing companies, who want to protect their brands. But within pharma it’s about more than that. For patients expecting a treatment for a disease, the stakes are often life or death and in the end, doing my job well makes a difference to them.

SERIALISATION IS A WAY OF TACKLING the problem and making sure that the medicine is authentic. My job is to help the companies implement the solutions as smoothly as possible. Our customers need someone who can cover all the angles, and I take great pride in helping them find the way in the jungle of drug coding, labelling technologies and rules.

OUR CUSTOMERS in the pharma industry only want to work with people they trust. With my level of industry knowledge and experience I am lucky enough to be one of those people, but I always make sure to introduce our young talents to the customer in order to boost their competencies and raise their stock as consultants.

Lars Olsen is the father of seven children. Roasting marshmallows with his youngest daughter Evelyn in the backyard is a favourite activity on a summer night. As she is too young to come along when her older brothers leave for summer camp, Lars and his wife Elizabeth make sure to arrange a lot of fun outdoor activities with her to give her the “camp feeling”.

INÉS ESTEVA• M.Sc. in chemical engineering from

the University of Valladolid (Spain)• Joined NNE in 2006 • Seven years of experience in process engineering

for pharma and biotech facilities and broad experience in process and utility technology systems

I ACTUALLY NEVER PICTURED MYSELF working within pharma. When I was a student in Spain I focused a lot on environmental engineering and residual water and things like that. I remember the first time I saw a pharmaceutical facility and I thought: “Is this really a factory?” Everything was so neat and clean, unlike the sugar factories I had worked on previously, where everything was dirty and smelled horrible. But the tidiness of the pharmaceutical facilities of course also says something about how challenging an industry this is. There are so many regulations and standards we have to live up to and there is a lot of paperwork that some engineers don’t like. You have to be organised and structured to work here.

I HAVE BEEN LUCKY ENOUGH to work mainly on the big international projects, which I really love. You get the full picture of how a huge pharma-ceutical facility is created and the opportunity to work across the different disciplines. In some companies you would never get to work with architects or electrical engineers, but I do and that is always a really interesting learning experience. To succeed on big projects you have to enjoy working in a big group or project team. You have to be open-minded, social and a good communicator. You can’t just sit in the corner with your little piece of the pie, because the problems are always in the interface between the disciplines. Coordination and communication is crucial in our work.

MY BIG BREAKTHROUGH was a major project in Switzerland. It came up during the summer and everyone was on vacation so I basically just had to go ahead and fix it. It was very new to me and quite tough but a huge learning experience. It’s a bit like learning how to swim by being thrown into the pool. Working on projects like that has had a huge impact on my development and the opportunity to work as a process lead now, which is a role that I love.I’m really happy that I can write on my CV that I’m working with some of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world.

Accelerated learning through hands-on projectsInés Esteva is a senior process engineer who joined NNE in 2006. She works as a process lead, which is the link between the customer, the project manager and the process-mechanical team, and ensures the efficient coordination that is necessary to a successful project.

This is the view from the apartment of two of Inés Estevas’ co-workers in Baiona, Spain. It was their home while working on a project assign-ment for a customer in Galicia. The apartment was the scene of many after-work poker nights where 10 to 15 NNE colleagues had dinner together and played cards for hours. After several years, Inés Esteva and the rest of the group still meet once in a while for a poker night back in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Facts

EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND OF EMPLOYEES Administrative

(6%)Architects (2%)

Building engineers (10%)

Otherengineers (10%)

Technician (12%)

Production engineers (1%)

Other academicbackground (20%)

Electronic engineers (15%)

Mechanical engineers (14%)

Process/ Chemistryengineers (10%) 15

40.44AGE (AVERAGE)

AGE (AVERAGE)

40.9 39.4

3,000PROJECTS A YEAR

EACH YEAR WE TRAVEL TO APPROXIMATELY

DIFFERENT COUNTRIES TO SERVE OUR CUSTOMERSOFFICE LOCATIONS WORLDWIDE

35

NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES

2,00032%68%

CAREER PATHS AT NNE In what direction do you seek to develop your competencies? At NNE, you have the opportuni-ty to pursue different career paths.

TALENT PROGRAMMESNNE’s talent programmes are called Sprouthouse, Greenhouse and Hothouse. The programmes target selected employees from young professionals to senior managers and help participants build and strengthen their global network as well as accelerate their personal and professional development.

GLOBAL LEADERSHIP PROGRAMMESWe constantly strive to enhance our competen-cies, including the leadership skills of our de-partment and project managers. Our leadership development programmes support department managers at various organisational levels and provide training in accelerating business perfor-mance, securing a customer-centric mind-set, and ensuring engaged employees. But we also focus on helping our project managers develop, too. Our project management training focuses

Our success rests on our people. Direct involvement in projects with different customers, technologies, colleagues and contexts is your guarantee for a steep learning curve. Through our performance and development process and our career development opportunities we empower our people to pursue their professional development.

Career development

on learning to lead teams to execute smarter, deliver on customer promises, and implement lessons learned in projects.

COMMUNITIES OF INTEREST (COIs) – ACCESS TO TOPNOTCH KNOWLEDGEThe NNE COIs are global communities which share a common interest or passion. This is where we seek help among our skilled colleagues, exchange industry insights and distribute best practices. The COIs have industry insight and are at the forefront of their pro-fession. They are responsible for making our knowledge available to our customers – anytime and anywhere.

GLOBAL EXCHANGE PROGRAMMEOur global exchange programme provides the opportunity to temporarily work on a project in another country, strengthen the employee’s global network and develop strong technical and personal skills. During the past three years, a total of about 100 exchanges have taken place, with participants from all around the NNE world.

When I joined NNE, I was hired on a large project for Novo Nordisk in North Carolina. As part of my transi-tion to the project, my manager and I decided that I would come to NNE in Kalundborg on exchange to learn and take best practice knowledge back to the project in North Carolina.

I had a great experience on the global exchange programme: it challenged me as an engineer. As a person, it took me outside my comfort zone and made me adapt to a different culture and working environment. And professionally, it taught me that there are different methods to approach the same tasks that I’d been doing the same way for most of my career. Those lessons push you to be a better engineer in the long run, as they make you more open and flexible in the way we do things.

Rick Floyd, Senior Quality Engineer from Raleigh, North Carolina, USA Global Exchange participant in Kalundborg, Denmark

“

I ACT AS THE LINK between architects and engineers as I have quite a lot of knowledge within both areas. Coordination between the groups is both challenging and inspiring. Challenging because we work with huge project teams for some customers and inspiring because you get to deal with things that might not be just within your area of expertise.

HAVING AN INTERNATIONAL BACKGROUND is an advantage in a company like NNE. Speaking Chinese has definitely been very useful in some projects, and I plan to go to China and work in one of NNE’s offices in the future.

BUILDING OFFICES and apartment buildings, as I did before I joined NNE, is very different from creating pharmaceutical facilities. You need to learn a lot about regulations, standards and guidelines in the life science industry when you start out.

I LOVE HOW MUCH KNOWLEDGE is anchored in the organisation. On our way to a customer site, I recently shared a company car with a pro-cess engineer that I hadn’t met before. He has been with NNE for decades, and it was so fascinating to hear about what he works on. You have to be curious and eager to learn from your colleagues. If you are proactive and seek knowledge there are so many experienced people in this company that can teach you a lot, especially when you are young and inexperienced. Whether you are located in India or Denmark, any question you might have can be answered through our intranet from our global network of experts.

SINCE MY FIRST DAY AT NNE I have spent a lot of time and energy imple-menting a new tool for 3D drawings. If anyone has a question about it they come to me and it’s great being able to help them.

Hao Li decided to move to Denmark from China to study, and she has been based in the country ever since. In 2009 Hao Li got the opportunity to join an NNE study trip to China with other recent graduates to boost their business understanding. They visited the NNE offices in the country as well as major sights such as the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, built in the 14th century by the Yongle Emperor.

Going home smarterHao Li is a construction architect at NNE. After an internship with the renowned Danish architectural firm, BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group), she joined NNE where she combines practical skills with theoretical knowledge to supervise the building process from drawing board to building site.

HAO LI• B.Sc. in architectural technology and construction

Management from the Copenhagen School of Design and Technology

• Joined NNE in 2008 • Six years of experience with modern construction

and building processes

IN A NUTSHELL, my job consists of two elements. The first involves making acoustic predictions during the design phases of a project to ensure optimal acoustics in a facility before construction begins. The second component involves designing or optimising noise mitigating solutions in existing facilities. In both scenarios, my work is about helping our customers understand how the acoustics of a facility might sound in real life.

DESIGNING A WORLD-CLASS PRODUCTION FACILITY is, in my eyes, just as much about creating an attractive workplace for the facility’s employees as it is about bringing pharmaceutical products to market. If a facility has unnec-essary noise that is stressful for the people working there, it will lower their productivity and the quality of their working lives. I enjoy knowing that I’m helping our customers ensure a better workplace for their employees.

TO ME, BEING CLOSER TO THE CUSTOMER isn’t just about understanding a customer’s needs, but about communicating technical data in an under-standable way. In popular culture, noise is often explained by comparing decibel levels to very subjective references, like a refrigerator or vacuum cleaner. Part of my job is to translate that into something more comprehensi-ble, so our customers know exactly how those numbers will play out in their employees’ working lives.

ALTHOUGH I’VE WORKED WITH ACOUSTICS FOR SEVERAL YEARS, the high level of focus here was what initially drew me to NNE. I had worked at more general engineering companies before, but was looking for a place where I could zero in on a specific field and set of customers. I’m part of a large health, safety and environment department with a range of experts in different fields, and I appreciate that we are all diverse but very specialised at the same time. While I work on acoustics, my colleagues across the hall are working on the same project – just in a very different technical field than mine.

Mathias’ passion for acoustics isn’t limited to the workplace. In his spare time, he plays the kora, a string instrument from West Africa. He has travelled to Wales, France, Senegal and Gambia to participate in kora lessons and workshops, and in the past few years, he has started designing and building the instruments himself. In Denmark, he likes to play at a quiet spot in the forest.

Sharpening focus to meet customer needsMathias Haase is an acoustic consultant and is responsible for making noise predictions, measurements and simulations during the design of production facilities. After working with noise and acoustics in general engineering firms, he joined NNE in order to focus specifically on pharma customers and projects.

MATHIAS HAASE • B.Sc. in civil engineering from the

Technical University of Denmark • Joined NNE in 2015 • Eight years of experience within noise,

acoustics and engineering

Getting to the core of competency development

At NNE, we don’t have a factory with machines; our great-est assets are our people and their minds. And we know that solving our customers’ greatest challenges requires first-rate pharma engineering knowledge. That’s why strengthening our core pharma engineering competencies is at the top of our agenda.

One of the major ways we address this is through our global competency development programme, PEAK – or Pharma Engineering Advanced Know-how. The PEAK programme offers top-quality development courses to our

employees, focused on a set of core areas that we’ve

determined to be essential for us to excel in.

We know that it’s just as important to be razor sharp on cutting-edge pharma technologies as it is to be able to advise our customers,

ask them the right questions, and get to the bottom of their challenges. So PEAK focuses on helping our employees develop both their technical and soft skills.

Our courses cover everything from project execution to customer consulting to the latest develop-ments within fill and finish technologies. Moreover, all courses are developed and run by our own internal experts, who are some of the best in the industry.

We use a blended learning approach, meaning that we offer traditional classroom training as well as webinars and e-learning courses. But courses alone aren’t enough: we believe that education, exposure and on-the-job learning are all equally important. We take training out of the classroom and onto the shop floor whenever we can, as it’s much easier to anchor what you learn by applying it in practice.

Our people are the heart of NNE – and in order to provide our customers with the best possible solutions, we need to provide our employees with the competencies to do so. That means providing them with an environment where they can learn, thrive

and develop from within.

Challenging projects with global customers

Novozymes, China/US

In one of the largest cross-re-gional collaborations ever in NNE’s history, prefab modules were transferred from China to the USA. NNE designed and implemented the world’s most advanced biofuel plant.

UCB Pharma, Belgium

NNE provided design and EPCMV services for UCB’s new cGMP biotech facility and helped the customer set up a risk and science-based verification system.

AWARD-WINNING. NNE won the Facility of the Year award for this groundbreaking project for Novo Nordisk. The facility was built to produce a new drug for haemophilia patients who suffer from severe bleeding that is uncontrollable and life-threatening. The state-of-the-art plant was built in only 18 months using a modular approach and innovative design solutions.

GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals, Germany

To help meet a seasonal deadline, NNE provided qualification and validation support – coordi-nating an international validation team of five separate parties.

Boehringer Ingelheim, China

Boehringer Ingelheim’s first biotech facility in Asia is intended for con-tract manufacturing of monoclo-nal antibodies and recombinant proteins and based on NNE’s Bio on demand™ concept.

Novo Nordisk, Denmark

NNE is providing all engineering services for Novo Nordisk’s new aseptic filling facility, which entails built-in flexibility and some of the newest technology in insulin filling.

Roche, China

With NNE as project manager, Roche established an oral solid dosage plant within a strict dead-line, while keeping on budget and maintaining high quality standards.

Novartis, Switzerland

NNE supported Novartis in the procurement and qualification of two packaging lines for soft galantines capsules.