S2E3: What Do We Do?

The Life Science Effect

In Season 2, Episode 3 of *The Life Science Effect*, Steve Vinson discusses BPM Associates' work. He explains BPM’s core purpose and values—supporting people, fostering teamwork, and reducing turnover in the life sciences industry. Through personal stories, Steve illustrates the challenge of defining “what we do” in simple terms and describes BPM’s approach to managing projects in pharmaceuticals, including combination product scaling, regulatory compliance, and facility expansions. Emphasizing people-centered project management, BPM seeks to avoid burnout while meeting timelines and budgets. Future episodes will feature BPM employees sharing insights on their project experiences.

MUSIC: Acid Jazz-Kevin MacLeod used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License FULL TRANSCRIPT:

You are about to experience the life science effect season 2 brought to you by our presenting sponsor, BPM associate. Extraordinary people's relationships that matter, important change for a better world. The joy of belonging. Life, science, leadership. I'm Steve Vincent and this is season 2 episode 3. Finally, after many weeks of waiting, we're going to talk about what we do, so you'll remember Episode 1 was start with. Why? And we talked about our core purpose about extraordinary people working together in a great environment to accomplish important lasting change. And then in episode 2 of season 2, we talked about how we go about doing that, starting with our core values of people first. Relationships matter. Service to a greater cause than DEIB, and we put structures and systems in place so that our folks can be extraordinary. As exemplified by my hospital visit and the demonstration that if you take care of your folks, your folks will take care of your customers. So that's starting with Y and we got the concentric circles start with. Why then how finally we get to the outermost concentric circle? What the heck do we do? So first I'm gonna tell you a little story from a few years back. Went to a networking event and you know when you go to these networking events, somebody's always asking what do you do? And this one was no different. Had gone to this event. It was at the Columbia club in downtown Indianapolis, which is this kind of ritzy, beautiful building. They have nice art hanging on the walls. And so it was a nice place. And I practiced my, what we call the elevator pitch. The whole way there, because I had to drive there from from my house and the elevator pitch for those of you that may not know what I'm talking about there, it's that 10 seconds or so of an answer. When somebody says, what do you do? So you go to a networking event, you get on the elevator to go somewhere. You've got between 3 and 10 floors. To tell this person in that elevator what you do. That's your elevator pitch, so I'm practicing it the whole way over. It doesn't come natural for me, and answering that question, what do you do? It used to be really hard for me. You know what? What do I say? Project management. I'm a project manager. Yeah, well, me too. Everybody's a project manager these days. What does that mean? What do you? What kind of projects do you manage? And then I'm I'm talking about pharmaceutical projects. And medical device projects. Next thing I know, their eyes are glazed over and they're like, why couldn't you just say lawyer or doctor or something? My knows what that is. And I'm like. I just always had trouble with it, so I would practice these elevator pitches and this day was no different the entire way there. I'm practicing behind the wheel and then I get to the parking garage, which, by the way, paying for parking is is not easy like there's usually like an app where you got to text somebody or. And it's really expensive. So anyway, that sort of interrupted my train of thought. Then I couldn't figure out how to get out of the parking garage. I go down like three flights of stairs and then I find myself. Of trapped on the 2nd floor, I had to ask like this this one dude that was like directing people where to go was like how do I get out of here? He's like out that door and turn left. So I did. I find my way out. I finally get to the networking event and take the elevator. Ironically, nobody was in the elevator. Just me. So I'm still giving my elevator pitch to myself. I breeze out of the elevator straight into the networking event, head straight for the coffee bar, because that's what the networking books tell you to do. They say go to the refreshment area. If it's in the evening, it's where they serve the drinks anyway. I go over to the coffee thing and where people are and I'm making my coffee, there's another person making her coffee. She probably read the same books. She looks at me and I look at her. We're like, here we go, right? We're about to network. Networking is about to begin and she's about to ask me what I do. I'm ready for this, she goes. So tell me about yourself. I I I was. What? That's exactly what I said. She's like. Well, well, tell me about yourself, man. I was ready for what do you do? I wasn't ready for. Tell me about yourself in my head. I'm like, let's see. I was born in Northwest Indiana. No, wait. That's too far back. Chemical engineering degree. No, she doesn't want my resume and I was like, OK, I just. I stopped. They said. I practiced this elevator pitch. I was ready. And now I'm just frozen. I'm thrown off. She was apologizing to me, and I'm like, no, I'm the one that should be apologizing to you. And I said, can I just start over? She's like, please do. I said cool. Hi, I'm Steve Vinson. I'm a project manager and pharmaceutical and medical devices. I help clients get their projects done. Faster, better under budget. And she looks at me and she goes. Real estate. What? No. What did I say anything about real estate? She's like, yeah, in the beginning, I said Steve Vinson. No, it was after that, projects. No. Before that, I don't think I. So now we got this awkwardness hanging in the air. Right. And I finally was just like. There's somebody over there I want to talk to you. So this. What do you do? Question. The bottom line is didn't always come naturally to me. Right. And you have to recognize in some ways that the purpose of the question, it's not what she asked. It's just she could have said give me your elevator pitch. Or she could have said the truth. Which is, hey, we're both at this. Event let's tell each other what we got going on so we can figure out if you can help me or if I can help you or if I know somebody that can help you or if you know somebody that you can introduce me to. That's all we're doing here. We're not trying to get each other's life stories. This isn't Life magazine. Just give me the 10 seconds so that I know whether do I need to move on to the next. So now Fast forward to today. And as I've said, I'm the CEO of a company and I represent the company at events. I'm no longer just representing me, so I need to stay on message no matter what the question is, you know, tell me about your company. Tell me about you. Tell me about yourself. What do you do? I need to be ready with those few messages. That I want to communicate. On behalf of the company. So that's what these podcasts have sort of been about. It gives me an opportunity to practice, but it also steps you through the process too, maybe for your company or you know, maybe by getting reintroduced to our company, we can find ways to help each other. So here's some messaging for you. Speaking of what we do, I saw a statistic recently. About a million people in the US work in pharmaceuticals and medical devices. And most of those are working on. Projects. 90%, I would say are more of the people of the professionals working in pharmaceuticals are working on. Projects turnover rate for those folks year over year is about 25 to 30%. That's like one out of every three or four people you're working with on a project is going to leave that job this year. And think about the impact that has on your project team. You got to really go through the storming, norming, performing, norming, storming and performing stuff. You got to reteach people. What the projects about get them back up to speed, hugely disruptive, not to mention the reason they're leaving is they're frustrated there. They don't see the connection of their project to the world or to. Making a difference for patients and so if we can figure out a way to run projects better, then we can reduce that turnover rate first of all. But more importantly, we can have people instead of feeling like they're going to a job and they're stressed out about getting their projects done, they can thrive in their career. Be happier at home and just leads to a better world. And again, not to mention patients get their medicines faster, they get their devices faster. So at BPM that's what we believe we believe in managing projects differently. Yeah, we get projects done on time and under budget by the way, if you meet somebody that works at a company and they claim they. Leverage project management or specialized in project management, but they're not telling you. They'll get their projects done on time and under budget. They probably shouldn't be in the business of project management. It's kind of like table stakes. You getting projects done on time and under budget. But I digress. Yes, BPM gets projects done on time and under budget. That's always our goal. But we also focus on not leaving behind a trail of burnout and frustration. We prioritize people. We want the people working on our projects to feel like they've grown. They've learned something new and they look forward to coming. Work because when people feel valued, they stay and the project thrives. That's all well and good, but you know, that wasn't 10 seconds. That wasn't an elevator ride. That was like, I had to capture you for a good 5 minutes to tell you all that. So how would I answer that question today if I were to go to a networking event? I end up in the elevator. Now. I'm not perfect. None of us are. Perfect. But the difference here is I believe in this message, and this isn't just some slogan to me. And the more I practice it, the more natural it's going to sound. So somebody asked me tell you, tell me about yourself. What do you do? Hi, I'm Steve Benson. I'm the CEO of BPM associates. We're a life science consulting. Firm that overseas client projects. So our consultants and experts, they get complex projects done on time, within budget and most important to us, we don't leave behind a trail of carnage. So there you go. Our approach is all about creating an environment where teams aren't just completing tasks, they are thriving by now. If I'm at the networking event, they'll be like OK. I I still don't quite get it. I get you guys do projects. I get you lead client teams, but like what? Actually kinds of projects are you doing? So what I thought I'd do today is I'll give you 3 different examples of some projects we've done and what kind of difference we've made for the client and this should give you a little bit more of a concrete feeling for what we do. So the first one. Comes from a large pharmaceutical company that had recently gotten approval for a drug that comes with a device. So we call those combination products. It's the drug is already pre loaded into the into the syringe. And the drug took off in the market place and they had to suddenly make a lot more of it than they had capacity for. So we had a number of projects where we helped them install the equipment that manufacturers these combination devices. So our project managers and in some cases project experts were involved with helping the team specify what kind of equipment they. Created. Get that equipment on order and it's multiple pieces of equipment, so a lot of moving parts. The people who manufacture this equipment, they have questions you have to make sure you're communicating. Getting those questions answered to keep that piece of it on track. Then, when the equipment shows up at the client site, it has to be installed bolted to the floor, plugged in to the electricity has to be plugged into the IT systems. It's remarkable how much these manufacture. Lines are integrated with IT systems, so knowing something about those IT systems is important for the project manager. Keep in mind our project managers aren't usually the expert on the technology, but they know enough about the technology to be able to talk to the engineers and technicians who are the experts on the technology to identify risks. Risks help them resolve issues, remove obstacles out of the way, etcetera. So now that the equipment's on site, both the down plugged in to the electricity into the data. Systems. Now it has to be turned on and tested everything. All this equipment, the process, everything has to be tested so that we know that every single device that comes off of this manufacturing line is safe. It's effective. It's not going to hurt somebody. It's not going to be broken. When when you get it from your pharmacy and get it home and open it up, it's going to be a good one. We can't test. Each and every one of the devices, so we test the equipment and the process that make the devices so that you can know that it's still going to be a good device. That's our project and we've done a number of these. We've gotten the capacity up to the point where the market is filled fulfilled with the medicines that people need. And by the way, all the people that worked on these projects, they have really enjoyed their work. They knew why it was important. And at the end of the day, they want to do another one and they want to work with, they want to work on a project where BPM person is running the project. So next example is a lot different kind of project, but it's still a project and then we'll call it a quality system. Improvement project and that's where a regulatory body like the FDA or one of the international bodies maybe comes in. And and finds some deficiencies at a pharmaceutical manufacturer or a medical device manufacturer, and by deficiencies, I mean they're not following the regulations perfectly. They have some issues and their processes that create risk that they might be making bad product. They aren't necessarily making bad product. But there's the risk there because they're not following the regulations completely as they should be, so our project has been, would go in, we take a look at what the findings were from what they call the audit, where the the regulatory body came in and looked at their systems, gave them some. Sessions and we work with the client. We form a team of both client folks and experts in the industry. Experts on those regulations and we figure out where those deficiencies are. We get to the root cause of those deficiencies with the client so that we're not just putting band aids on the issues. We're actually addressing the underlying cultural or underlying root causes. Of the problems that they've had, in some cases that involves rewriting procedures, it may very well include identifying product that possibly is bad, that may need to be recalled, and then we'll help them through that process as well. So again we.

They.

Aren't necessarily the expert on FDA regulations. We know an awful lot about FDA regulations, but we have a network of experts and sometimes the client is an expert, but they don't know how to take their expertise and turn it into actual strategic and tactical actions to get these procedures. Rewritten or get these deficiencies remediated so the project becomes organizing that team and organizing the effort to get things rewritten and redone so that the FDA or whatever regulatory body can come back in, take another look at the. System and in every single case in the projects I've been involved with, the FDA comes back and says, OK, everything's fixed, you're out of trouble now or whatever the whatever the case may be. So that's quality system projects. The third one is maybe more standard of what you would think of a project and that is facility expansion. And that is just straight up somebody's building a building or they're changing something inside of a building. They're renovating a building or they're building a new building. So those of you who maybe didn't know about pharmaceutical manufacturing or didn't know about the quality system type projects, this is the kind of project where you're like, ohh yeah, I know what a building is. I know how that works, a lot of the facility expansions we do or the facility renovations now it's happening within a pharmaceutical or medical device company. So it has to follow those regulations as well. And some of these end up being a much bigger too. So we our project managers, we would put us more senior person. On a project like that, because now they're overseeing a team of hundreds of people that are doing wildly different things, you know, some of them are the experts on what does this facility need to accomplish, what kind of air handling units, what kind. Of floor finishes, wall finishes need to be in here. So you got those experts all the way to the experts on construction. So you might be working with a large. General contractor concrete people. So that's a really those are fun projects because you're working with a wide range of people and when we're on those projects again by understanding what's this building for, who's it for, what does it need to do? Why do you need this building? What happens if you don't build this building by understanding those things? Our project managers can really motivate and inspire A-Team to do their best work. Those are my three case studies for the day. I've got a lot more I think now that we've gotten through the why. The how and we're on to the what we're going to do a few more. What's so? I'm going to bring in voices of our employees to tell you about the projects they're working on. Because. You can hear it from me and you get my perspective. But boy, when you maybe hear from a project manager who's still out there every day running these projects, it it brings a different perspective. So we'll probably do a few of those in the future as well, but that's it for today. Thank you for listening. Don't forget, do all the Internet things you know like subscribe. Comment Send me an e-mail, go to thelifescienceeffect.com to figure out how to listen to this thing on all your favorite platforms and subscribe so you don't miss a single episode. You want to learn more about BPM? Go to bpm-associates.com. And continue listening to the life science effect.