Bill Jarvis

Senior Fellow - Pharmaceutical Process

St. Louis, MO

It comes as no surprise that Bill Jarvis is a Senior Fellow of Pharmaceutical Process at CRB; he has been involved with some of the most revolutionary projects in human blood plasma fractionation production and large-scale oligonucleotides production facilities worldwide. In the past 15 years, there have been six major plasma fractionation expansion / renovation projects in the United States, and Bill was the Lead Process Design Engineer for four of them! Additionally, he has worked as Lead Process Designer for 10 large-scale oligonucleotide and peptide synthesis facility design efforts.

Bill has more than 38 years of broad-based chemical engineering experience, including 15 years of research related to chemical process development and optimization. His involvement ranges from exploratory process development, through lab and pilot plant scale-up, process design, process start-up and process optimization. He specializes in active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) production facility design, oral solid dose formulation (OSD) processes and parenteral pharmaceutical formulation and filling projects.

Bill came to CRB in 1991 from a background of work in operating company environments – a background that has been very beneficial to CRB’s clients in the design of their production facilities. Bill’s broad experience in industrial chemical / pharmaceutical processing provides a practical approach to making the transition from a concept (process or product) to design and operations. Currently, he is working as a contributor on the design and construction of a new plasma fractionation facility, a major expansion to an animal formulation and filling parenteral facility, and a new chemical API production facility.

With Bill’s strong passion for excellence and continuing education for our employees, he helped found our internal “Expert Team” concept with Gerry Richardson and Ken Jacobson. As a long-term program leader, he oversees multiple CRB Expert Teams that help set project standards and guides the development of our engineers within their chosen discipline.

As a result of his long-term involvement with chemical production facilities, and his personal concern for keeping those facilities safe, Bill also serves as one of CRB’s leaders in process hazard analysis and Hazard and Operability review documentation. Experience with hazards and safety has also expanded his knowledge in toxic and hazardous process containment technologies and equipment design.

Bill belongs to International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering (ISPE), American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) and American Chemical Society (ACS). Bill helped develop the community of practice (COP) concept within the ISPE, is a past chair of the API COP, is a long term member of the containment COP and contributes regularly on the OSD COP. He has been a guest speaker for both ISPE local chapters and national meetings, and is a past speaker for the TIDES conference on peptides and oligonucleotides.

“I spent 15 years of my career on the owner's side, working with industrial chemical and pharmaceutical processing, which offers insight to clients that many other design firms don't have. Such knowledge lends a PRAGMATIC APPROACH to helping our clients make the transition from a concept to inventive design, whether for a project, process or product.”

Insights By Bill