Making it Work

Good project management can help the bottom line

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BY PATRICIA NICHOLSON

Science may be the heart of every biotech company, but it’s not enough to tend to your technology. You’ve got to mind your business, too. Cultivating the talent to do that in-house may not be practical, but project management consultants offer help for hire.

To understand what project managers can offer, it helps to adopt a broad definition of the term “project.” A project can be a well-defined short-term task, such as moving, or an ongoing function in which the project manager assumes the role of an overseer. Robbins-Gioia LLC, headquartered in Alexandria, Va., provides that diversity of services throughout North America, with clients ranging from the U.S. Air Force to the Brain Repair Centre in Halifax, N.S.

Darren Jerome is head of operations for Robbins-Gioia’s Canadian office. He describes project management as a common denominator: a means of integrating all the elements and organizational entities that are mutually responsible for the success of an initiative. Some of those components are self-evident, but others aren’t so obvious. “There are hidden elements that a good project manager needs to bake into a solution,” Jerome says. Elements such as good data practices might not otherwise have a voice, despite being vital to success.

Biotech companies have a tendency to grow with what Jerome calls a “stovepipe bias.” They start with a scientific core and good ideas, then expand in a straight and narrow model by building a research platform and then stacking up functions such as regulatory, legal and marketing as they become necessary.

“Even though these are small companies, there are a lot of fiefdoms,” Jerome says. “Project management is the glue that integrates various elements into a common team.” One of the key elements of that glue is to have consensus on criteria for success. “You need a well-defined and achievable plan to succeed.”

The value added by strong project management is not limited to internal parties. Jerome notes that investors and other external stakeholders demand a certain level of confidence in a venture. Unlike a few years ago, that now requires confidence in the management as well as the technology. Client relationships, Jerome says, are often built by demonstrating the value of the service on smaller projects, which leads to larger and longer undertakings.

When the dot-com boom was at its height, there was a certain amount of complacency about traditional management skills. “That bled into biotech with the idea that a good idea was enough to succeed,” Jerome says. But he notes that that trend has done an about-face, and the bias is now towards a solid plan and competent management.

Despite that change in attitude, project management as a function still meets resistance, and Jerome still does a certain amount of what he calls “missionary work” — convincing non-believers.

Many companies only discover the value of project management after things go wrong — when “something’s in trouble,” says Bill Bates, CEO of Bates Project Management Inc., in Ottawa, Ont. Bates’ firm offers consulting services, project management teams, product methodology and associated software as well as training.

“If they haven’t evolved to the point that they understand what project management really does for them as an organization, then they tend to learn their lessons in crisis,” he says. Bates cites finding solutions to the Y2K computer problem as an extreme example. “Whether Y2K needed to happen or not, one of the things it did was advance the cause of project management because it brought project management right to the board level of a lot of organizations.”

Big organizations, he says, should treat project management as another function of the enterprise, like accounting or systems or engineering.

“A really good professional project manager — one who has done this for a while — can handle any kind of project,” Bates says. “I personally have dealt with everything from construction to policy development.” His company is a generic project management firm, offering services to a wide spectrum of industries.

“When you really get into it, the bigger the project, the less important it is that the project manager has deep technical knowledge of whatever it is that you’re dealing with,” Bates says. “If I get into a $100-million project, I need a corporate president — not a PhD.”

The need for management as a separate function from technology is becoming more accepted.

“There’s certainly a recognition that the management of a project is quite important, and that you don’t just turn it over to a technical person who may or may not have a management background,” Bates says. “That’s been a tremendous, tremendous mistake made over the last number of decades, especially in technical-area projects.”

While projects and approaches may vary, there are skills that Bates says are vital to successful project management.

“The first thing that all project managers need to recognize is they are change managers,” Bates says. “Every project ever put in place is going to change something in the organization.”

Projects tend to cross organizational boundaries and involve many functions and many types of people, so interpersonal skills are also imperative for a project manager.

“They’ve got to be people people, if you will. They’ve got to be leaders,” Bates says. “They’ve got to know how to handle people. That does not mean they have to be soft and fuzzy. They have to know when to be soft and fuzzy and when to be hard-nosed, and what groups they have to do what with. They have to be very people-conscious.”

Bates adds that planning and controlling abilities are also important, as well as an eye for the bottom line.

“I think a good project manager has to have a fairly decent understanding of financial management. They don’t have to be accountants, but they have to know where money comes from and how it’s used,” he says. “They have to know how to manage budgets within the confines of the overall corporate structure.”

The key benefits of strong project management include selecting the right projects. “Because sometimes we do the wrong projects,” Bates says. Once the right project is selected, it should be carried out as effectively as possible, within budget and on schedule.

“What it’s bringing is a consistent way of managing projects, a consistent way of handling planning, a consistent way of handling controls. What it should be doing is — number one — hitting the bottom line, because it should be saving the company money by delivering projects at the right costs,” Bates says. “It really should be there to impact their earnings.”

For some project managers, specialization is part of their expertise. Ian D. Robertson has been consulting for biotechnology firms in Western Canada since 1987, when biotech was in its infancy. While he often takes a strategic role, there are practical problems for which industry experience, knowledge and contacts can be indispensable.

Recently, for instance, a client phoned him late on a Friday afternoon with an urgent problem: some chemicals the client had ordered were going to be delivered on Monday, and the client lacked suitable storage for them. “So I scratched my head and I thought, OK, who do I know who’s got a plus-four cooler?” Robertson says. “That’s down to the practical, but that’s among the kinds of things you end up having to deal with along the way.”

He cites outfitting labs and negotiating commercial leases as a practical area in which his experience adds value for clients.

“Leases tend to run 30 to 50 or 60 pages with a whole lot of jargonese that to a scientist doesn’t make a lot of sense. And there are certain key phrases in these leases which have to be watched very carefully from the standpoint of a biotech company,” Robertson says. “A typical office will put in $10 to $30 per square foot in terms of improvements on a leased space. A biotech can easily put in $200 per square foot. If you’re going to spend that kind of money you want to have a different kind of control over your space.”

His company, Ian D. Robertson Inc., often takes on a role that Robertson calls business management, which he describes as “everything other than the science.”

“I can’t and won’t supply the science,” he says. “And all of the business management skills and activities that I can provide are designed to co-ordinate with the science.”

The payoff from that type of service is the climate it creates for the scientists.

“Ultimately, what all of that says is that you’ve created an environment or a platform in which innovation, creativity, invention and risk-taking are OK,” Robertson says.

His job is to facilitate those things.

“What you’re trying to do is bring forward the best of the ideas, as opposed to the safest idea. What you’re trying to do is bring forward ideas sooner and faster than they would otherwise come. What you’re bringing forward is absolute and total commitment on the part of the scientist, as opposed to ‘I only get paid to do x, y and z.’”

Robertson’s services can last anywhere from three months to several years.

“The relationships are often what you might call open-ended,” he says. “And they’re based on trust.”

Almost all of Robertson’s new business is the result of referrals from other clients. Most of his clients are biotechs that have not yet gone public.

“As the company builds out from three scientists to 10, then 15 or 25, I get involved very much with the structure and organization of the company,” Robertson says. “The thing that I invariably do is I get involved mainly as the company morphs from one technology to another.”

Robertson says the typical biotech does not go public until it is on its fourth technology, so there’s a lot of change along the way. There are advantages to having someone like Robertson as a consultant, rather than in-house.

“What they need six months from now is not what they need today. So if I’m going to come aboard as an employee now, my whole job description would have to change,” he says. “The second thing is that there are typically three or four companies that want me and none need me for more than a fraction of my time.”

As the biotechnology industry expands and matures, Robertson says his role is evolving into a “coach-slash-advisor to senior scientists and founders of companies.”

“I’ve been in biotech long enough to realize that business is either second to science or a partner to the science,” he says. “If you don’t have science, you don’t have a business.”