Smartsheet PMO at Thermo Fisher: How 30 locations are managed with a single link

Case Study · Webinar Recap · Nico Roepnack · April 21, 2026 · 9-minute read

“By the time you think your presentation is up to date, it’s already outdated.”

Florian Zbinden, Senior Project Manager at Thermo Fisher Scientific, made this statement during our webinar on March 19, 2026. He describes a problem familiar to every PMO leader in the pharmaceutical, life sciences, and capital project management sectors: hours spent on status slides, and by the time the board meets, the reality has already moved on. During a global LIMS rollout across 30 production sites, this was not the exception. It was the norm.

This article explains how Florian and his team broke this cycle, the architecture behind it, and why it works even for mid-sized organizations with significantly fewer locations. Key point first: A functional Smartsheet PMO is not a tool project. It is a decision about information architecture.

The webinar recording

Industry Context: Why Capital Projects in the Life Sciences Are Particularly Vulnerable

Thermo Fisher Scientific is a global supplier to the pharmaceutical industry with locations in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Asia. Florian’s division is responsible for quality and IT programs across 30 to 60 locations, depending on how the division counts them. The specific reason for implementing Smartsheet was a global LIMS rollout—that is, the implementation of a Laboratory Information Management System.

Three factors make such projects in the life sciences industry structurally more challenging than a typical IT project in a small or medium-sized business:

• Regulatory pressure: Every process change must be validated, documented, and traceable in a way that stands up to an audit. Version chaos in Excel isn’t just inconvenient—it’s a compliance risk.
• Multi-site rollouts: The same change is being implemented simultaneously across 30 plants, each with its own local conditions, time zones, and languages. Without a centralized view, managing the process becomes a gamble.
• Change management as a core discipline: The pharmaceutical industry is not the most flexible sector. Habits, SOPs, and qualifications change slowly. A tool that forces end users to relearn both the logic and the interface at the same time is doomed to fail.

Whether you manage just three projects instead of 30, or a capital expenditure portfolio instead of a LIMS, the process remains the same. The question of scaling comes later.

The starting point: 30 locations, 30 versions of the truth

Before implementing Smartsheet, the setup was what Florian openly described as chaos. Dozens of SharePoint pages, PowerPoint presentations for every team meeting, MS Project plans for each location, and Excel spreadsheets for risks, issues, actions, and resources. None of these systems communicated with one another.

The PMO team spent days manually compiling information before every steering committee meeting. Even after this consolidation, no one could say for sure whether the figures from the night before were still accurate. Florian sums it up succinctly in the webinar: The problem wasn’t a lack of diligence. The problem was the design. When data is stored in multiple locations, it’s physically impossible to keep it all up to date at the same time.

Handling Objection 1: “But Excel works for us”

Excel is a fantastic tool for isolated calculations. As the backbone of a PMO, however, it falls short in three key areas: It does not allow for consistent roll-ups across multiple projects without manual effort. It lacks true multi-user collaboration with an audit trail. And it forces the PMO into the role of a data collector rather than a controller. Anyone who, upon honest self-reflection, realizes that half of the PMO’s time is spent on copy-paste work has already answered the question.

Handling Objection 2: “But we already have SharePoint”

SharePoint is an excellent document repository. It is not a project management system. The difference: SharePoint tracks file versions. Smartsheet tracks data versions. One is an archive; the other is a dynamic management layer. Thermo Fisher continued to use SharePoint for attachments and documentation. The management logic has been moved to Smartsheet. Both have their place, but they serve different purposes.

The Solution: Smartsheet Control Center as the PMO's Operating System

The decision to adopt Smartsheet was made following a structured evaluation. The deciding factor was not just the range of features, but the ability to build a central Smartsheet PMO that aggregates real-time data from all projects. No big-bang rollout, no months of custom development. Instead, a three-phase approach.

Step 1: Use the PMO Template Set as a starting point

With the Control Center, Smartsheet provides a ready-made PMO template set. It includes a project plan, risk log, issue log, action log, status report, resource overview, and dashboard—all interconnected. Florian’s team didn’t build this template from scratch; instead, they customized it. They adopted the structure and adapted the content. This saves months of work and ensures standardization from day one.

Step 2: Tier 1 to Tier 4 Information Architecture

The strategic core of the rollout was the decision to organize information into four levels and to map the company’s tiered meeting structure precisely to this framework.

• Tier 1: Executive Dashboard. Portfolio status for vice presidents and directors. Red, yellow, and green indicators. No details, only exceptions.
• Tier 2: Program dashboards. A view for program managers of all associated projects, including milestones, budget, and critical issues.
• Tier 3: Project Plans. Operational level of project managers. Gantt charts, tasks, dependencies, and responsible parties.
• Tier 4: Raw data and detailed views. Issue logs, change requests, validation artifacts.

Each level provides exactly what its target audience needs—no more, no less. That may sound obvious, but in practice it’s rarely done. Most of the PMOs we encounter at Lighthouse Consulting present the executive board with lists of operational tasks and show project managers aggregated status indicators. That’s exactly the wrong approach.

This concept can be applied regardless of the tool used. Internally, we refer to it as the Tier 1 to Tier 4 information architecture, and it is the framework we use to kick off every PMO transformation.

Step 3: Pilot before width

Before the system was rolled out to all 30 locations, a pilot program was conducted at two sites. The goal was to identify vulnerabilities before they could have a widespread impact. Only after the pilot was successful did the gradual rollout begin. This approach is standard practice in the pharmaceutical industry anyway. In other industries, it is an underrated lever that reduces resistance to rollout to a fraction of what it would otherwise be.

What Control Center actually does: Blueprint, Profile Data, Summary Sheets

The Smartsheet Control Center is a premium feature of the platform and the technical engine behind the PMO. Three concepts are key:

• Blueprint: The template from which every new project is provisioned. Sheets, dashboards, reports, workflows—all created in a single run. A new project is up and running in minutes instead of hours.
• Profile Data: Metadata set during creation (country, location, program, phase, budget). This metadata automatically powers filters, reports, and dashboards. If you later search for “all projects in Phase 3 in EMEA,” you’ll get the answer in just two clicks.
• Summary Sheets: A consolidation level that aggregates project data into portfolio views. This is the layer from which the Tier 1 and Tier 2 dashboards draw their data.

The result: The PMO doesn't build dashboards; the PMO builds a process. Dashboards are the automatic result.

Change Management: “We only changed the tool, not the information”

The most underrated statement from the webinar was this: “We only changed the tool, not the information.” Florian’s team deliberately chose not to introduce new terminology, new processes, or new roles when rolling out the tool. Those who had previously submitted a weekly status report continued to do so on a weekly basis, just in a new location and in a more structured format.

This is exactly where most tool rollouts fail. When end users have to learn both the logic and the interface at the same time, they give up. The result is end-user-first design: it’s not the administrators who decide what the system looks like, but the people who work with it every day. In a highly regulated environment where every process change entails validation efforts, this approach is not just appealing. It is economical.

The Results: What Has Changed Specifically

Florian describes four measurable changes following the rollout.

One hyperlink instead of 30 SharePoint pages. The entire PMO is now accessible via a single link. Management, program managers, project managers, and the PMO team all refer to the same source. This is the moment when transparency stops being just a buzzword.

New projects in minutes instead of hours. With Control Center, the entire project environment is provisioned at the click of a button. The baseline quality is the same for every project.

Automatic escalation. When a project status changes, Smartsheet notifies the designated stakeholders. No manual follow-ups, no “Has anyone reported this yet?”

Issues are solved, not managed. Florian’s candid quote from the webinar: “I was almost shocked to see how quickly issues and risks were suddenly addressed.” There aren’t fewer problems. They’re visible, and therefore solvable.

Before you decide: The Academy Path

Rolling out a PMO isn’t about choosing the right tool—it’s about building the right team. We recommend that project managers considering a rollout first understand the underlying logic. At the LHC Academy, you’ll find concise courses on Smartsheet fundamentals, dashboarding, and PMO architecture. If you’d like to connect with the team, you can also find us in the Intelligent Work Management LinkedIn group.

Quick Check: Does your PMO face the same challenge?

1. Do you spend more than two hours a week on manual status updates?
2. Is your project data spread across more than three tools or locations?
3. Do you create management presentations manually instead of linking to a dashboard?
4. Does your management team have to ask someone to find out the current status of a project?
5. Does it take longer than 30 minutes to set up a new project?
6. Do you know the total budget variance for your portfolio off the top of your head, or do you have to calculate it?

Three or more "yes" answers: the same structural problem that Thermo Fisher faced before its transformation. It is solvable, and it applies to portfolios of medium-sized companies as well.

FAQ: Smartsheet PMO in Practice

What is a Smartsheet PMO, and which companies is it suitable for?

A Smartsheet PMO is a centralized project management infrastructure built on the Smartsheet platform that brings together project plans, risks, issues, dashboards, and reports in a single environment. It is ideal for organizations with multiple concurrent projects, distributed teams, or cross-location collaboration that want to replace Excel and SharePoint as the backbone of their PMO. Typical scale: 5 or more projects and 2 or more locations.

How does Smartsheet Control Center differ from a standard Smartsheet license?

Control Center is a premium module available on Smartsheet Advance plans. It automates the provisioning of new projects from blueprints, manages profile data as a metadata layer, and aggregates project data into summary sheets for portfolio views. Without Control Center, you have to create projects manually. With Control Center, a new project is up and running in minutes and has the same structure as all the others.

How long does it take to implement a Smartsheet PMO?

Using the PMO Template Set as a starting point, a functional setup can be established in 6 to 12 weeks. The key is to conduct a pilot involving two to three projects before beginning the full rollout. Thermo Fisher went from decision to stable operation within a year, including a rollout across 30 locations.

Can Smartsheet completely replace Excel in project management?

For PMO management, project planning, risk and issue management, dashboards, and reports: yes. Smartsheet offers real-time collaboration, automated workflows, audit trails, and portfolio rollups—features that Excel simply cannot provide. Excel remains useful for isolated calculations and ad hoc analyses, but not as a data repository for the PMO.

What is the biggest risk involved in a PMO transformation using Smartsheet?

The biggest mistake is to redefine the process logic at the same time as rolling out the tool. Thermo Fisher’s guiding principle—“Only the tool has changed, not the information”—is the simplest safeguard against acceptance issues. If process changes are needed, they should be implemented in a second step after the tool has been introduced.

Also interesting: the same architecture in the automotive industry

What Florian Zbinden describes for life sciences projects, the FEW Automotive Group has implemented for mass production and ramp-up management. Two industries, the same structural logic: a single source of truth always trumps a network of well-intentioned parallel documents. The tier architecture is identical; the dashboard content is not.

Additional Resources

• Portfolio and Project Management with Smartsheet
• Smartsheet as an enterprise platform
• LHC Academy: Smartsheet PMO Fundamentals
• Reference: FEW Automotive Group

Source: Webinar “From Excel Chaos to Project Transparency,” Lighthouse Consultings, March 19, 2026. Speaker: Florian Zbinden, Senior Project Manager, Thermo Fisher Scientific. Moderator: Nico Roepnack.