Technology & scale-ups

Your pilot runs. Your investor asks about the first industrial plant. And your team is full of cell chemistry?

Your technology is proven. Now the risk shifts: away from the reactor, towards the specification, Balance of Plant, manufacturing and investor scrutiny. That is exactly where I start.

Smaller first packages often start the next day

Where are you?

From lab to series. It gets expensive from the pilot onwards.

Pick your stage. You see what matters now – and how steeply the cost of a change rises from stage to stage.

Pre-FEED: this is where the fixed price is decided.

Site, basic data, specification. Whatever stays open now, the plant builder will invoice later as a change order.

Cost of a change: ×100

Typical questions

Are your basic data complete and robust?
Are the interfaces to the Balance of Plant clear?
Which components have long lead times?

What I do here

Design review before the EPC award
Specification check from the owner's side
Prioritised list of open points before the award

Discuss this stage Pilot → first plant (DE)

Rule of thumb (rule of ten): the cost of fixing an error rises by roughly a factor of 10 per project phase. Cited in: Rupp, doctoral thesis, Saarland University 2024. A guide value, not a measurement.

Clarify your stage in 15 minutes Self-check in 3 minutes (DE)

The four gaps

Where scale-ups lose time and money between pilot and series.

Your team is strong in the core process. The gaps sit at the transitions. Which ones do you know?

Specification & EPC

The EPC wants basic data we do not have yet.

From the container pilot to the chemical park: a specification the plant builder does not renegotiate.

Pilot → first plant (DE) Test rig & BoP

It is not the stack that worries us, but everything around it.

Cooling, water, compression, instrumentation: size the test rig and Balance of Plant so they hold up.

Test rig & Balance of Plant (DE) Design for manufacturing

Demand is there, but our stack is still handmade.

Manufacturable design, plus assembly and testing that grow with the order book.

Stack → series (DE) Technical due diligence

The investor wants to know whether the roadmap holds.

A hard technical review before the funding round, before someone else does it.

Due diligence (DE)

I know this – call back For industrialisation and plant managers (DE)

What it costs

What six months of FOAK delay cost.

There is no fixed figure per month of delay. The sum is simple: months of delay times your burn rate. Add the revenue that starts later.

Front end shortened under time pressure
Gaps in basic data
Changes during execution
Start-up slips
Investor milestone missed

+6 monthsbeyond the statutory deadline is how long BImSchG permit procedures run on average, after 1.5 years until the documents are complete.Source: BDI study 2021, cited in UfU overview 2025

+33 %cost and +30 % time on large projects with an aggressive schedule and a weak front end.Source: IPA/Merrow 2012, industrial megaprojects > USD 1 bn

3–5 %of total investment is what a good front end costs. It protects the large remainder.Source: IPA/Merrow 2012, rule of thumb for large projects

Calculate your own delay (DE)Information by email

How you will know

How you will know the gap is closed.

That is what we want – 15 minutes

Our plant builder gets complete basic data at the first attempt, including part load and start-up.
Balance of Plant and site connection are sized before the award, not discovered in detail engineering.
Our core team is back working on the technology, and one person holds the technical thread through to commissioning.

Reference

From new electrolysis to the planned first industrial plant.

A climate-tech scale-up with its own electrolysis process. I support the path from the early plant concept to the planned first plant, technically consistent, under one framework contract.

Reference by email All references

Example, anonymised

Climate-tech scale-up with its own electrolysis process

Starting point: Process proven in the lab and as a prototype. Next step: the first industrial plant.
Bottleneck: Test rigs, stack systems, Balance of Plant and contract award all at once, on top of process development.
What I did: Test rig and single-cell stacks, Balance of Plant sizing, design reviews before EPC award, build and commissioning planning.
Result: One consistent technical roadmap from concept to the planned first plant.

Dr.-Ing. Tobias Breitbach working on a plant

Dr.-Ing. · Mechanical engineering

Who does the work

An engineer who sees process, plant and manufacturing together.

I am Tobias Breitbach, with a doctorate in production engineering. You work directly with me. I deliberately run only a few projects in parallel.

Talk to me for 15 minutes More about me

What I do not do

Explosion-protection assessments (ATEX) belong to specialist experts. I bring them in instead of pretending it is mine. And I do not replace an EPC.

What I do: review the critical interfaces between process, plant and manufacturing so that your EPC and your experts can work cleanly.

Getting started

Start without a large mandate.

A defined package at a fixed price agreed in advance, for example a design review before EPC award. NDA before any data is exchanged.

Approach & first packages

Does your scale-up fit?

I want to check whether our scale-up fits.

For a smaller, clearly defined first package I can often start the next day: read in, think through, prepare the site visit. From the start you talk to the engineer who also does the work.

Your pilot runs. Your investor asks about the first industrial plant. And your team is full of cell chemistry?

From lab to series. It gets expensive from the pilot onwards.

Lab: the main function is proven.

Typical questions

What I do here

Pilot: container or pilot hall.

Typical questions

What I do here

Pre-FEED: this is where the fixed price is decided.

Typical questions

What I do here

First plant (FOAK): changes get expensive.

Typical questions

What I do here

Series: quality and target cost at volume.

Typical questions

What I do here

Where scale-ups lose time and money between pilot and series.

The EPC wants basic data we do not have yet.

It is not the stack that worries us, but everything around it.

Demand is there, but our stack is still handmade.

The investor wants to know whether the roadmap holds.

What six months of FOAK delay cost.

How you will know the gap is closed.

From new electrolysis to the planned first industrial plant.

Climate-tech scale-up with its own electrolysis process

An engineer who sees process, plant and manufacturing together.

What I do not do

Start without a large mandate.

I want to check whether our scale-up fits.

How would you like to start?