Contract Testing Laboratory Selection: 5 Points to Consider
No matter how large and established the company you work for is, as a researcher you must already know that contract lab services are indispensable. This is because in-house labs cannot possibly have extremely specialized equipment or lab technicians who are used to working with that specialized equipment.
However, not just any contract lab will do. Your company’s reputation depends on the contract lab that you partner with. Because the kind of contract lab you work with determines the quality of your products. How far you have complied with the regulatory standards set by the government is also determined by your choice of contact lab.
So, what are some of the crucial points you should keep in mind before selecting contract lab services? Keep reading to find out.
1. Proper Accreditation
This is the very first requirement that you must keep in mind. Accreditation is beyond all subjective demands that will come later. Unless you partner with an accredited lab, your product is not going to pass the preliminary tests conducted by the FDA. ISO/IEC 17025 is an accreditation that is accepted globally. You must ensure that every contract lab you shortlisted has this particular certification.
Why is this certification so important? Because you might not have the expertise or the time to audit the workings of the contract lab personally. But these accreditations are awarded after trained experts have put the equipment, the workers, and the general functioning of the lab through thorough scrutiny. Thus, you can rest assured that if your contract lab services have the ISO/IEC 17025 certification, then they are following the standardized quality system that is accepted all over the globe. This ensures that you can easily market your products internationally with minimal obstacles.
2. Regulatory Bodies for Each Industry
But simply having an ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation is not going to cut it. Relevant regulatory bodies need to approve your contract lab to ensure that the results derived from the lab are acceptable to other national or international regulatory bodies. For example, the labs testing on pharmaceutical products need to be approved by the drug control department or the FDA. Without this approval, the pharmaceutical product cannot be introduced into the market.
Similarly, authorities that control export need to approve contract lab services that test food products that are meant to be sold in foreign countries. Before choosing a contract lab, you need to know which regulatory bodies are concerned with your industry.
3. Prior Experience with Your Industry
While there are many contract labs you can choose from, finding one that has already worked with a company like yours is a good idea. For example, if you are a drug developer, then working with a contract lab that fellow drug developers also use is a good idea.
This will not help you get any information about your competitors because strict confidentiality is maintained by contract lab staff members. But, if the lab technicians and scientists have worked on a similar product before, they will know which flaws to look out for. Also, you are provided with a great opportunity for networking if you work with these labs with prior experience in your industry. Making sure you are working with technicians and scientists who have more specialized knowledge than you is essential because they will be able to clear any doubts or misconceptions that you have about the testing processes.
There’s another benefit in working with a contract lab that has prior experience with your line of work. Unless they have worked on similar tests before, the process of communicating exactly what you need from them becomes way more difficult if they too have no prior experience working on similar projects.
4. New and Sophisticated Instruments
One of the key reasons people hire contract lab services is to gain access to the niche or specialized equipment that may not be available in your company’s own laboratories. Not only do these niche instruments and equipment need to be maintained properly, but they can also be operated only by a select group of trained professionals.
Therefore, while choosing the perfect contract lab for yourself, you need to make sure the lab has all the specific kinds of instruments that you will need for your project, alongwith experienced staff members who can work with and maintain those instruments.
If the instruments are old, they are bound to produce inaccurate results. This is why you should always be on the lookout for new and sophisticated instruments, reducing the time and effort of the experimenters while increasing the accuracy of the experiment itself.
There is another reason why the instruments at your partner lab need to be new. Regulatory and market requirements change all the time. Old equipment is incapable of keeping up with these changes.
5. New Recruits
This is a roundabout way to find if your contract lab has a good reputation. There is a misconception that labs that are currently hiring have inexperienced staff. Having recruits is not always a bad thing. New professionals are more up-to-date with the current market and regulatory requirements. Also, they are more likely to have experience with the newly evolving technology.
Also, if a lab is hiring, it means that the lab is doing rather well financially. Its reputation on the market must also be good for it to have a considerable number of applicants. Labs that hire a lot of recruits usually specialize in a lot of niche modern age scientific procedures.
There are various other factors like distance from your facility and cost that you must keep in mind before opting for contract lab services. After all, you cannot work with a lab that is too far away to receive your samples or one that is too expensive for you to afford. Ultimately, communication is the key. Only choose a lab with which you can comfortably communicate your requirements.
