Drug Development Procurement Plan
This is a practical guide to building a procurement plan for a drug development project — what will be bought, how and from whom, adapted to the realities of developing a pharmaceutical product through regulatory stages.
What a Procurement Plan is
A procurement plan is what will be bought, how and from whom. For the full concept and how it works in general, see Procurement Management. On a drug development project it plays the same role, tuned to this kind of work.
Why it matters for a Drug Development project
Drug Development projects live or die on developing a pharmaceutical product through regulatory stages. A well-built procurement plan gives the team a shared, explicit reference for exactly that — reducing ambiguity, aligning stakeholders, and making problems visible early enough to act. Skipping it, or doing it generically, is how drug development projects drift into avoidable delay and cost.
What to include
- What to procure
- Contract types
- Selection criteria
- Timeline and SLAs
Drug Development-specific considerations
Tailor the procurement plan to the risks that most often derail drug development projects:
- Regulatory approval delays
- Trial/validation failures
- Strict GxP compliance
Example
On a real drug development project, the procurement plan would be shaped by developing a pharmaceutical product through regulatory stages. In particular, it should explicitly account for the project’s biggest risks — regulatory approval delays, trial/validation failures, strict GxP compliance — rather than treating them as afterthoughts.