A wide array of LBP Engineering competencies were called for during the course of more than two years assisting EPAX in Aalesund with the acquisition and expansion of a large fish oil factory. New product tanks were added to the site, while the daily capacity was increased sixfold – taking in part of the former fiord area in what became known as Project Highway. In all, quite the endeavour.

LBP took on the overall project responsibility as well as the task of preparing the site for the future. This entailed an early mapping of necessities and possibilities, already from the first design phases and up until handover to the client of the new factory. Putting together the right project team was crucial.

”It’s very much about communicating and picking a team of different professional competencies who can well work together. If you manage to cleverly tie together the different branches of a project organisation, you increase the chance of success greatly. It inspires confidence if everyone knows the direction we’re going in and have a shared understanding of both necessities and possibilities,” explains project manager Lars Bjarne Pedersen.

Lars Bjarne Pedersen was at the head of construction management, as well as supervision, quality assurance, procurement of product tanks and other equipment, tender management related to subcontractors, and also directly managed applications to Aalesund Municipality. All of this, while the factory was in full operation, even during reconstruction. This entailed a heightened degree of cleanliness on the construction site.

Precisely because the facility was intended for both pharmaceutical production and the production of fish oil for food supplements, many different professional competencies were needed. Project development had to be constantly coordinated and aligned with the factory management, as well as product and quality managers, daily operators, and other professionals. For that reason, LBP chose to focus on user involvement.

“We strove to listen and then advice, in that order. It generates a mutual trust if project management is calmly executed, if expectations are aligned, and of course if all goes according to budget. It also mattered that we presented the exact same team throughout the course of this project. That sort of continuity has certainly added to the client’s general feeling of satisfaction. When the factory was ultimately sold to an American enterprise, we could tell that they too were impressed with our work up there,” says Lars Bjarne Pedersen.