Brian is a Partner in our Minneapolis office and has deep expertise in oil and gas, agriculture, chemical, and commodity operations. He currently leads our downstream oil and gas work, as well as the firm’s North American chemicals and agriculture manufacturing efforts.
Since joining McKinsey in 2012, Brian has led improvement projects at over 80 manufacturing facilities, mostly at large plants serving the refining, oil and gas, petrochemical, fertilizer, agriculture, and food processing industries. His experience includes manufacturing, procurement, supply chain, process optimization, production planning, and outage management.
Specific examples of projects Brian has led include the following:
- analyzing a global refiner’s performance, leading to delivery of $700 million in annual improvements over 18 months
- supporting a top US refiner in using advanced analytics that increased yield and throughput, delivering approximately 50 cents per barrel in free cash flow improvement.
- Leading a series of engagements for a fertilizer client, including a procurement transformation, which resulted in bottom-line cash savings of $50 million; raw materials strategies, including a savings strategy of $100 million and $600 million in capital expenditure avoidance; a five-year growth and operations strategy; a plant footprint strategy, and optimization of yield and throughput
- transforming operations performance for an agricultural food processor by identifying $200 million in recurring EBITDA impact, with an $80 million-per-year run rate captured in the first three months by using levers to increase throughput and reduce indirect and maintenance costs
- running a manufacturing diagnostic and transformation for an edible oil processor and identifying and capturing over $15 million per year in savings within three months
Brian also has expertise in applying analytics to manufacturing facilities to optimize or maximize production, reduce unplanned downtime risk, optimize across units, and building capabilities such as advanced process control, linear programs, and more.
Prior to joining McKinsey, Brian worked at a top quartile North American refinery in a variety of engineering roles. In addition to his work, Brian serves on the board of Achieve Twin Cities and Carlson Consulting Enterprise and lives in Minnesota with his wife and three children.