Your Biopharmaceutical Capital Equipment Project Is Cancelled - Now What?

By Matt Hicks, Chief Operating Officer & Counsel, Federal Equipment Company

Originally published on Pharma's Almanac

Drug development from compound screening through commercial launch for pharmaceutical companies involves long lead times, highly complex and inflexible capital equipment, and high failure rates. Project owners make decisions with high uncertainty for the product's market potential as well as uncertain and complex technologies. Late-stage clinical trial failures, typically those in phase III before approval, result in huge valuation hits for the product owners. Unfortunately, these cancellations also usually result in some fair amount of exposure with regard to capital equipment purchased to manufacture that product at commercial scale. Replacement or back-up projects need to take the place of these projects as part of a robust product development strategy.¹ But what does a project manager do with this brand new, surplus equipment?