Day One

• Designing a 35,000 m² diagnostic research hub that empowers 800 scientists through intelligent workflows, adaptable lab spaces, and collaboration-first environments
• Exploring how the team balanced scientific agility, operational efficiency, and user experience to shape a facility purpose-built for future discovery
• Adopting key lessons from delivering a next-generation R&D centre (completed October 2025) that reduces operational burden while accelerating innovation

This high-energy Hot Seat session lets you put your questions directly to cross-industry 

operational leaders and discover how other sectors tackle the same LabOps challenges 

with far greater speed, scale, and automation.

• Gain cross-industry insights from tech, robotics, manufacturing, and pharma on digital maturity, automation, space strategy, and operational models that labs can adopt today
• Hear rapid-fire Hot Seat interviews that reveal practical, transferable tactics for improving reliability, sustainability, workflow efficiency, and change adoption
• Walk away with an actionable view of how other sectors overcome challenges similar to LabOps, offering fresh solutions to modernise labs faster, smarter, and with greater resilience

As this community unites, this session will provide valuable networking time with your peers, 

enabling you to forge new and lasting connections.

• Using behavioral science to drive shared equipment and right-sizing decisions
• Engaging in productive conversations when scientists insist “I need my own instrument”
• Building influence pathways to decision-makers and budget owners
• Turning utilisation dashboards into action plans, not arguments

Discover how leading organisations simplify digital transformation, cutting complexity, standardising workflows, and accelerating adoption, to build connected, high-performing labs that deliver real operational impact

• Discussing how organisations at different scales approach digital transformation, from pilot tools to enterprise-wide platforms, and what success looks like at each maturity stage
• Exploring lessons from pharma, biotech, tech and research institutes on standardising workflows, enabling interoperability, and avoiding “shiny tool syndrome”
• Enforcing change leadership in digital labs: driving adoption, shifting behaviours, and overcoming resistance when data, systems and people don’t naturally align

• Evolving LabOps infrastructure, processes, and equipment strategy to support rapid scientific expansion without slowing research teams or overbuilding too early
• Balancing agility with structure as organisations mature, defining roles, governance, and cross-functional workflows while preserving the speed and flexibility of start-up culture
• Scaling safety, compliance, digital tools, and vendor partnerships in a way that remains cost-effective, resource-efficient, and adaptable across changing team sizes, sites, and priorities

• Exploring GSK’s new operational model for off-site lab service delivery and consumable management
• Lessons learned from partnering with a service provider to streamline operations and reduce internal overhead
• Balancing control, efficiency, and quality when shifting from in-house management to a hybrid service ecosystem

• Explore strategies to simplify and harmonize cold storage and sample management processes across diverse teams, sites, and scientific workflows
• Discuss approaches to reduce waste, energy consumption, and operational inefficiencies through smarter inventory control, capacity planning, and system integration
• Share practical lessons on improving sample traceability, compliance, and decision-making by creating more unified, transparent, and sustainable storage ecosystem

Join a dynamic, audience-driven debate exploring whether LabOps should enforce utilisation mandates, and how policies impact efficiency, culture, autonomy, and the scientist–LabOps relationship.

• Should LabOps require scientists or teams to use a certain percentage of their allocated lab space or equipment?
• Should underutilised resources be reclaimed or reassigned?
• Should there be formal policies or metrics that dictate how efficiently labs must operate?
• How utilisation mandates impact scientist trust, autonomy, and culture, and whether enforcement drives engagement or resistance?

Discover how biotech-inspired lean practices, from smarter consumables management to low-budget operational 

experiments, can deliver major efficiency gains and cost savings across large, complex R&D environments

• Implementing biotech-style consumable and reagent discipline to cut everyday waste and minimise consumption across lab functions
• Improving fleet utilisation by addressing redundant equipment and driving shared resource behaviors, not just system-level fixes
• Pilot “no-budget / low-budget” LabOps experiments to test lean approaches before full digital or capital roll-outs