Explore the Agenda
7:00 am Check In & Coffee
7:50 am Chair’s Opening Remarks
Regaining Control & Stability in Lab & Site Operations
8:00 am Re-Designing Lab Operations for a Constrained Era to Maintain Performance Under Budget, Headcount, & Time Pressure
- Identifying where operational spend no longer delivers value by redesigning workflows, roles, and support models to protect critical lab output while eliminating low-impact effort and redundancy
- Improving asset, space, and workforce utilization by aligning operational priorities to what directly enables scientific productivity, reducing idle equipment time, duplicated purchases, and unplanned downtime
- Stabilizing delivery timelines and reducing operational risk by moving from reactive firefighting to disciplined, data-informed decision-making that preserves performance despite ongoing budget and staffing constraints
8:30 am Choose Your Own Adventure – Unlock It One Module At a Time
- Why large-scale operational transformation usually fails under today’s constraints
- How a modular approach switches on capability precisely where it delivers most value
- How to identify your highest-leverage starting point and prove value before committing further
- How individual capabilities compound into an integrated operating model over time
- A lower-risk, more defensible way to improve lab performance
9:00 am Adapting Lab Operations to Do More with Less While Protecting Scientific Output
- Rethinking how work gets done across the lab by challenging legacy processes, reallocating responsibilities, and refining support structures, cutting out activities that add limited value while safeguarding the work that truly drives results
- Driving greater efficiency from existing resources by ensuring equipment, lab space, and teams are focused on high-impact priorities, reducing underutilization, avoiding unnecessary spend, and minimizing disruptions to day-to-day operations
- Creating more predictable and resilient delivery by embedding structured, insight-led decision-making, moving away from reactive problem-solving to a more controlled, forward-looking approach that sustains performance despite constrained budgets and teams
9:30 am Speed Networking
Join our speed networking session tailored for operation leaders, like yourselves, to connect with industry peers about ongoing challenges and opportunities within the rapidly evolving operations space. Elevate your networking experience during this session designed for impactful connections among operations leaders.
10:15 am Diagnozing Where Operations Fail First to Reduce Risk Across Assets, People, & Processes
- Pinpointing the earliest points of operational failure across equipment, staffing, and workflows to prevent downstream disruption that drives unplanned downtime, emergency spend and delayed scientific delivery
- Prioritizing investment toward the highest-risk failure points by distinguishing systemic breakdowns from isolated issues, enabling more effective allocation of constrained capital and operational resources
- Reducing cost of disruption and compliance exposure by establishing leading indicators that signal instability early, allowing corrective action before issues escalate into audit findings, asset loss, or productivity collapse
10:45 am Turning Lab Insights into Action
- Using connected data to guide equipment and maintenance decisions
- Identifying opportunities to reduce costs and downtime
- Turning operational insights into practical improvements across labs
11:15 am Morning Break
Networking & Snacks
Track A
Track A: Running the Site
Track A: Running the Site Exploring ways to keep sites running safely and reliably despite reduced resources, ageing infrastructure, and complex outsourcing models. Sessions cover maintenance maturity, facilities risk and regaining operational ownership.
12:00 pm Discover: Roundtable: From Reactive Firefighting to Proactive Control
- What are the biggest challenges preventing your organization from moving beyond a reactive, firefighting approach to maintenance and operations?
- Which data points or leading indicators have been most effective in helping you predict and prevent issues before they occur?
- What practical steps have had the greatest impact on improving operational reliability and creating a more predictable environment?
12:20 pm Operational Intelligence for Modern Labs: AI-Driven Efficiency Across Assets, Resources, & Workflows
- Surface hidden inefficiencies, underutilized capacity, and the root causes behind them with AI
- Connect siloed systems for a clearer view of lab operations
- Improve equipment uptime, utilization, and operational planning
- Enable better decisions across facilities, operations, and leadership teams
1:00 pm Develop: Shared Q&A
1:15 pm Action: Roundtable Session
Collaborate to identify practical starting points, potential barriers, and strategies for making necessary change.
Interactive Peer-Led Discussion Facilitated by the Chair
1:30 pm Partner Spotlight: Reserved for Neta Scientific
Track B
Track B: Running the Lab
Navigating core lab-level inefficiencies that intensify under lean conditions, asset blind spots, duplicated equipment, and unclear role boundaries between scientists and operations.
12:00 pm Discover: Rebuilding Asset Visibility & Control to Improve Uptime, Forecast Spend & Support Scientists Effectively
- Reducing unplanned downtime and service delays by restoring accurate, real-time asset visibility that enables faster issue identification, prioritization, and response
- Improving budget accuracy and cost control by aligning inventory data with maintenance, service contracts, and utilization patterns, eliminating blind spots that drive unexpected spend
- Increasing scientific productivity and confidence by ensuring critical equipment availability is predictable, transparent, and proactively managed rather than dependent on ad-hoc knowledge
12:20 pm What If Half Your Cold Storage Isn’t Creating Value? Transforming Hidden Costs into Research Capacity
- Expose the hidden facility impact of cold storage: learn how fragmented inventories, underutilized equipment, and limited visibility contribute to unnecessary space, energy, maintenance, and operating costs across the research environment
- Use data to right-size the cold storage footprint: explore how facility assessments, asset inventories, utilization data, and inventory rationalization can inform consolidation decisions, reduce freezer demand, and reclaim valuable space for science
- Build an infrastructure strategy that scales with research: see how improved tracking, shared resource models, automated high-density storage, and intentional placement of materials across the lab, centralized facilities, and off-site repositories can support long-term capacity, resiliency, and sustainability goals
12:40 pm Develop: Shared Q&A
1:00 pm Managing Role Creep in Lean Lab Environments to Preserve Scientific Productivity & Prevent Operational Burnout
- Protecting scientific output and timeline delivery by clearly defining operational ownership and preventing scientists from absorbing administrative, maintenance, and coordination tasks that dilute research focus
- Reducing hidden labor costs and burnout risk by redesigning role boundaries and support models that allow lean teams to operate sustainability without relying on informal overtime or goodwill
- Improving operational efficiency and accountability by aligning responsibilities to skills and value creation, ensuring work is performed by the right function at the right cost
1:40 pm Lunch & Networking
1:40 pm Lab Design Tool Private Lunch
Join this exclusive session hosted by Lab Design Tool to learn how leading $1B+ pharma organizations are recovering $1M+ annually by transforming lab design into a scalable, repeatable operational advantage.
Exploring leadership, governance, and communication failures that create conflict between maintenance, facilities, production, and R&D, and how to realign them.
2:40 pm Discover: Aligning Leadership Priorities Across Site Functions to Reduce Scheduling Conflicts & Operational Friction
- Reducing wasted labor, idle assets, and re-work by establishing shared priorities across maintenance, facilities, lab ops, and R&D that minimize last-minute schedule changes and conflicting demands
- Improving asset availability and delivery predictability by synchronizing production, lab usage, and maintenance planning, enabling more effective use of limited windows and resources
- Increasing decision speed and accountability by providing leaders with a common operational framework that clarifies tradeoffs, escalations, and ownership when priorities compete
3:00 pm Discover: Driving Site Reliability Through Performance, Prevention & People
- Establishing measurable performance baselines through clearly defined service levels, auditable KPIs, and reliability-focused metrics that improve accountability, visibility, and operational decision-making
- Reducing operational risk and avoiding costly downtime by applying predictive maintenance strategies and condition-based monitoring to identify equipment issues before they disrupt critical facility operations
- Strengthening workforce capability and long-term asset performance through targeted in-house training programs that improve maintenance execution, preserve asset life, and help control future capital expenditures
3:20 pm Develop: Shared Q&A
3:50 pm Action: Roundtable Session
Collaborate to identify practical starting points, potential barriers, and strategies for making necessary change.
Interactive Peer-Led Discussion Facilitated by the Chair
Advancing process design, workload distribution, and operational decision-making that allows labs to function effectively under sustained pressure.
2:40 pm Discover: Designing Lean Lab Workflows to Maintain Throughput & Data Quality With Fewer People
- Sustaining experimental throughput and data integrity by redesigning lab workflows to eliminate non-value-adding steps, reduce hand-offs, and minimize rework despite reduced staffing levels
- Lowering operational cost per experiment by standardizing processes and optimizing task sequencing, enabling smaller teams to deliver consistent output without reliance on overtime or informal workarounds
- Reducing error rates and compliance risk by embedding quality controls directly into lean workflows, ensuring reliability and reproducibility are maintained even as resources are constrained
3:00 pm Driving Sustainable Laboratory Operations: Reducing Environmental Impact Without Compromising Performance
- Balancing sustainability goals with laboratory performance by reducing energy consumption, waste, and operating costs
- Rethinking laboratory equipment design to minimize reliance on plastics, disposable filters, and hazardous decontamination chemicals
- Exploring innovations in incubator technology, including active humidity control, UV-LED technology, and H₂O₂ decontamination, to support more sustainable laboratory operations
- Delivering measurable environmental improvements while maintaining compliance, equipment reliability, and a low total cost of ownership
3:20 pm Discover: Reducing Scientific Delays by Clarifying Ownership Between Lab Ops, Facilities, & Vendors
- Reducing experiment delays and schedule slippage by clearly defining ownership, decision rights, and offs across lab ops, facilities, and external vendors, eliminating wait states and miscommunication
- Lowering hidden operational costs by preventing duplicated effort, rework, and escalation cycles caused by unclear responsibility for equipment readiness, maintenance, and issue resolution
- Improving equipment availability and researcher confidence by establishing predictable support models that ensure problems are addressed quickly by the correct function, protecting scientific timelines and data delivery
3:40 pm Develop: Shared Q&A
4:00 pm Action: Roundtable Session
Collaborate to identify practical starting points, potential barriers, and strategies for making necessary change.
Interactive Peer-Led Discussion Facilitated by the Chair
4:15 pm Partner Spotlight: Reserved for Calira
4:25 pm Afternoon Break & Networking
Pressure‑Testing How Operations Are Run to Prevent Costly Breakdown Under Real Conditions
4:55 pm Building & Scaling a Proprietary Chemical Inventory System to Meet Evolving Operational & Regulatory Demands
- Develop and scaled an in-house inventory system to improve visibility and operational efficiency
- Adapt the platform during the Cambridge to Boston transition to support increased scale and complexity
- Align the system with Boston-specific regulations to strengthen compliance and risk control
5:25 pm Panel: Making Intentional Insourcing & Outsourcing Decisions to Balance Cost, Control, & Capability
- Optimizing total operating cost without sacrificing reliability by deliberately defining which capabilities must remain in-house and which can be outsourced, avoiding false savings that lead to delays, rework, or quality issues
- Improving responsiveness and accountability by aligning insourcing and outsourcing decisions to business-critical activities, ensuring ownership, escalation, and performance expectations are clear across internal teams and suppliers
- Reducing operational and compliance risk by selecting operating models that match organizational maturity and capacity, preventing over-outsourcing of core knowledge or under-resourcing of critical support functions
5:55 pm Chair’s Closing Remarks
6:05 pm End of Conference Day One
6:10 pm LAFM Drinks Reception
Grab a Glass! Join our dedicated drinks reception to connect and network with like-minded experts