CRB Celebrates 40 Years

A company that began in a Missouri basement in 1984 has grown into an industry-leading engineering and consulting solutions firm with offices across the globe. Driven by its core principles of collaboration, responsibility, technical excellence, entrepreneurial spirit and fun, CRB is eying the next phase. 

By Alex Keown | May 6, 2024

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Over the past 40 years, life sciences services provider CRB has established itself as an industry-leading provider of sustainable engineering, architecture, construction and consulting solutions to the global life sciences and food & beverage industries.

CRB designs and builds life sciences facilities that are capable of changing the world of medicine. For four decades, privately-held CRB has served its clients by providing integrated project delivery, design, construction, pre-construction and procurement in its core service areas. CRB’s reputation is built around five central values – collaboration, responsibility, technical excellence, entrepreneurial spirit and fun. These values play a significant role internally, as well as in the way the company works with its clients.

Over the course of its four decades, CRB has served clients across the globe by striving for the highest standards of technical knowledge, creativity and execution.

“I look back on these 40 years with incredible satisfaction, and a deep sense of gratitude and good fortune,” wrote CRB President and CEO Ryan Schroeder in a piece distributed to CRB’s more than 1,300 employees during the company’s anniversary month. “CRB has rewarded me the chance to experience this business from nearly every imaginable perspective. I’ve grown from a young, wide-eyed engineer learning the ropes on important projects into a leader who has the extreme privilege of guiding and standing alongside highly talented, technically excellent professionals in our pursuit of difference-making projects for clients.”

The company was founded in 1984 in the basement of a home in Liberty, Missouri. It would have been hard for founders Jeff Biskup, Doyle Clark and Gerry Richardson – three mechanical engineers with a desire to innovate and find creative solutions to help clients – to imagine how their company would scale and take on projects of increasing scale and complexity. In the early years, CRB primarily worked with pharmaceutical veterinary agricultural companies that were looking for effective solutions at a lower cost. And that required innovative thinking from the CRB team to operate within the industry’s strict regulatory guidelines. CRB rose to the challenge and today, the company operates in multiple countries across the globe, driven by that same mission-driven sense of purpose of delivering premiere life sciences facilities.

In 2022, CRB was awarded three Facility of the Year Awards from the International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering (ISPE). The facilities CRB was recognized for are maintained by Catalent Pharma Solutions, Takeda Pharmaceuticals and Iovance Biotherapeutics.

In addition to serving its clients, CRB also played an important role in establishing guidelines used across the industry today. CRB subject matter experts contributed to the development of the International Society of Pharmaceutical Engineers Baseline Guides, the Original Baseline Guide for Water and Steam Systems as well as other guides. 

To keep serving its clients at the highest levels over the next 40 years, CRB is upgrading and expanding its footprint across the United States, Canada and Europe.

New Locations

This month, CRB unveiled its newest office in St. Louis. In 1990, CRB initially opened its St. Louis office, the company’s second. The new space is adjacent to CRB’s current St. Louis location and emphasizes natural light, flexible collaboration space, and amenities designed to elevate both the employee and client experience.

Located on the top floor, the new St. Louis office is an open floor plan designed to provide a view of the city from almost anywhere inside the office. CRB opted for lower workstation walls, which allow natural light to flow throughout the office. Other modern office features include mobile glass walls that can expand conference areas, zoned audio equipment, open areas for collaboration, as well as designated quiet areas. Amenities also include a café and wellness area.

The St. Louis site may be the company’s newest location but it’s not the only one. In June 2023, the company opened a New Jersey office to serve clients in that state and support existing offices from the BioHealth Capital Region to Philadelphia to Toronto. It was the company’s 21^st office and its fifth in the Northeastern United States.

The New Jersey location allows the company to support client programs ranging from research and development to commercial-scale production. The New Jersey office provides CRB with direct access to a strong pipeline of engineering, design, construction and architecture talent. It also allowed the company to be within close proximity to innovative scientific hubs that are developing new therapeutics and approaches to treat a plethora of diseases and indications.  

When CRB opened the New Jersey location, the company wanted to provide its employees with multiple amenities to support a strong work-life balance. In addition to investments made in furnishings and technologies, CRB’s site includes an outdoor courtyard, café and fitness center.

The New Jersey location became a model for renovations CRB is making to other offices across its footprint.

Updating Sites for the Future

As CRB looks at the next 40 years, the company is renovating some of its offices to meet the needs of its clients, as well as the employees who work there.

In March of this year, the company renovated its 15,000-square-foot Emeryville, Calif. office. The company updated the site with a modern layout and improved technology. The renovated site also takes advantage of the sensational views of San Francisco Bay. The updates to the office, which is located in the Emeryville Public Market, were inspired by suggestions from CRB employees. The renovation provides the company with flexible space that spurs collaborative and innovative thinking and cooperation among employees.

The design concept leans into collaboration. The breakroom and charette space are designed to support multiple meetings of small and large groups. The charrette space also serves as a library for the office, as well as a brainstorming area for teams.

While collaboration is critical to the California office, CRB remained aware of a need for quiet, focused workspaces. The office is color-coded to indicate which areas are available for collaboration or are used for quiet work.

CRB’s Emeryville location serves a broad range of biopharma clients from established well-known companies to exciting new start-ups.

Last year, CRB moved its Philadelphia office to a new location in the new Seven Tower Bridge building in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. CRB acquired 26,670 square feet of space to accommodate 150 employees. The new location is positioned to support clients within Cellicon Valley, the nickname of Philadelphia’s biopharma hub due to the boom of cell and gene therapy companies and research in the area.

Relocating to Conshohocken places CRB’s employees and their expertise among universities, start-up companies, and research and development organizations that make up Philadelphia’s vibrant and expansive life sciences community. The space includes conference rooms, collaboration spaces and an architecture and interior design library.

Similar to the Emeryville location, CRB’s Philadelphia office provides employees with areas meant to spur collaboration. An open floor plan and “neighborhood” layout allow team members to collaborate on various projects in dedicated spaces to best meet the needs of CRB’s clients.

Other site amenities include large windows to allow ample daylight, adjacent proximity to the Schuylkill River Trail and a fully equipped gym on site.