The Key to Delivering your Critical Projects in 2022
As we enter 2022, life science organisations are preparing and planning for the critical projects they need to execute across the coming year. From general quality maintenance to large scale process changes, planning and executing projects in a regulated industry has many challenges.
At Odyssey VC we have worked with some of the world’s leading life science organisations to help them overcome project roadblocks and continue to grow, adapt and innovate while maintaining the required industry standards. In this article we examine some of the main challenges currently impacting the successful delivery of critical projects, highlighting the key solutions to these challenges.
Key Challenges
Workforce Shortage
Skills Shortage
Resource Requirements
Cost
Planning
Workforce Shortage
It comes as no surprise that the global workforce shortage is one of the main challenges facing the industry and is leaving many organisations unable to execute on future projects under the backdrop of resourcing uncertainty. The ‘Great Resignation’ of 2021 is set to continue into 2022, leaving project managers and talent acquisition teams in the perilous position of trying to plan effectively with this critical variable for project success completely unknown.
Fighting a losing talent war has seen the industry shift even more towards ‘talent sharing’ through strategic staffing and secondment. Many Odyssey VC clients rely on this immediate access to resources – otherwise unavailable to them in the labour market – as a key element in the effective management and delivery of their projects.
Skills Shortage
The number of people available for hire in the industry is only one side of the coin however. For niche, technical or highly specialised roles, finding the right people is an entirely different challenge. The concept of ‘down-credentialling’ continues to grow in 2022; down-credentialling involves the lowering of entry requirements and introducing more on-the-job training to account for the market skills gap. Unfortunately, for the life sciences industry, this is rarely an acceptable solution.
With regulations and industry standards demanding excellence as well as the highly scrutinised nature of life sciences processes, the business risk of underperforming is too great to ignore. A vital aspect in many of our clients’ project success has not only been the access to our skilled resources onsite, but also the added protection of these resources being backboned by a wealth of additional knowledge and expertise from the Odyssey VC senior team.
Resource Requirements
The combination of workforce and skills shortages puts added pressure on life science teams trying to determine the adequate resources required to deliver their critical projects. With ever changing project requirements and the often-cyclical nature of delivery timelines, success often hinges on the organisation’s ability to access the right expertise at the right time and, perhaps even more crucially, for the right duration. Prior to partnering with Odyssey VC, many of our clients faced difficulty when setting out project resourcing budgets. Though their staffing needs varied at different stages of the project, inflexible secondment practices often resulted in forced over-spending on fixed term contracts so as not to run the risk of being under-resourced at crucial times.
Successful project delivery is reliant on having adaptable, reactive and scalable access to the essential expertise at every stage. Odysseys VC’s unique approach to strategic staffing has offered our clients this solution with flexible access to CSV engineers, quality assurance personnel and experienced project managers.
Costs
For life science organisations, regulatory obligations such a 21 CFR Part 11 in the US and Annex 11 in Europe, as well as their commitment to GAMP5, ISO and other industry standards, remain at the forefront of all critical project planning. However, the ever growing cost of the key expertise required to meet these obligations can potentially become prohibitive to new project development. With compensation for CSV engineers alone seeing an almost 20% increase in the last 5 years, many can struggle to adequately manage project costs without limiting progress, innovation and project agility.
Cost management is a key element in successful project delivery and is an area in which Odyssey VC works closely with our clients, offering support and experienced guidance in project budget management and operational savings.
Planning
Despite the many challenges thrown up throughout the various project phases, whether it be resourcing difficulties or spiralling costs, the foundation for project success ultimately begins at the planning stage. In an industry tightly governed by comprehensive and extensive standards and regulations, the requirements for an overarching quality and compliance strategy for your life science business is a key driver of your project success.
Working to define quality and compliance goals and objectives, situation assessment to identify risks and opportunities, and establishing a roadmap of defined activities and milestones all allow for improvements in ongoing project delivery. At Odyssey VC, we work with life science organisations to help build this foundation through our The Odyssey VC Regulatory & Quality Framework, providing organisations with the guidance and tools they need in order to build and execute a plan of action and achieve their quality and compliance goals.
Find Your Success Partner
Successful delivery of critical projects within the life sciences requires careful navigation through the many challenges currently facing the industry. The market limitations outlined above create an almost insurmountable hurdle for life science organisations operating without a trusted success partner.
Coupled with access to the essential and project critical personnel within Odyssey VC, our focus on building that success partnership is what helps drive our clients’ projects forward. With a wealth of expertise in planning and executing compliance and quality projects, the Odyssey VC team supports clients through these market roadblocks, with a proven track record in project delivery.
Our recent Strategic Staffing for Life Sciences guide offers more detailed information on how this solution can work for your organisation. If you would like to speak to one of our industry experts to find a success partnership that works for you, you can get in touch with the team here.
