Rey Hernandez- Senior Director of Quality Assurance & Control, Life Sciences, JLL
The rise of hybrid work, industry consolidation, and fierce competition for talent are forcing life sciences companies to rethink the purpose of their legacy facilities. Classic campuses are being reborn as innovation parks, industrial centers, and live-work-play communities.
This shift presents an opportunity for companies to evaluate their quality culture strategic enhancement approach on campuses while meeting never-ending evolutions of compliance challenges. By adopting a proactive approach, it is possible to breathe new life into old facilities while meeting regulatory requirements for safety and quality compliance.
How Companies are Enlivening Legacy Campuses
What makes a lively campus? It is more than a place where work gets done; it is a place for people to convene and feel like part of a community. The competitive talent market has prompted companies to enhance their workplaces with creative programming such as intramural sports leagues, community gardens, and guest lectures with visiting scientists. We also see many companies adding new amenities and design features that support sustainability and wellness.
However, the shift to hybrid work has introduced deeper challenges. Some biopharma are finding they have more real estate than they need as they give employees more flexibility to work remotely. These converging trends explain why we see so many creative uses emerging for legacy campuses.
In life sciences hotspots, real estate investors and developers have found success converting single company campuses into dynamic multi-tenant parks. For example, several years ago, GlaxoSmithKline sold its campus in Research Triangle Park to Karlin Asset Management, which assembled the parcel with the DowDuPont and Ellis DNC campuses to create the 638-acre Research Triangle Park. Karlin invested $80 million in building upgrades and amenities to eventually attract tenants such as Duke Health and Lab Corp.
In another creative development, a life sciences company sold the bulk of its campus to a multifamily developer while continuing to occupy an office building on the site. To eliminate an overly branded, corporate campus atmosphere, the company transformed the first floor of the office building into a welcoming public facility that includes a library, food services, and group exercise space for the larger community.
These examples illustrate how companies have found creative uses for underutilized space. The pace of change in the world today opens many possibilities for legacy campuses, such as repurposing older buildings for biomanufacturing, e-commerce logistics facilities, multifamily neighborhoods, warehouse development, and more. No matter what route a company takes, giving new life to an old campus presents a tremendous opportunity to enhance culture and reinforce quality.
How Enlivening a Campus Enhances Quality Culture
Whether an organization enlivens its campus through social events, wellness amenities, or more transformative initiatives such as developing a multi-tenant innovation park or live-work-play community, its effort can have an unexpected indirect benefit: enhancing its campus quality culture.
Quality assurance ranks among the top priorities for every company in the highly regulated life sciences industry. Maintaining consistent quality requires something that goes beyond the act of checking boxes for compliance. It requires adapting quality as a core value to support a culture where everyone — from scientists to custodial staff — prioritizes quality in everything they do.
Nothing enhances quality culture quite like a beautiful, dynamic facility where people enjoy spending time. Employees tend to produce their best work when they enjoy coming to the campus and thrive in their environment. That’s because when people don’t want to lose something they love, they outperform to keep it. Having pride in one’s workplace can deepen commitment to the company’s purpose and reinforce each individual’s role in maintaining quality.
Working in a multi-tenant environment, where employees can network with others in the industry, has the potential to enhance quality culture even further. People can meet face-to-face to discuss best practices and industry trends, sparking new ideas and fresh ways of approaching old problems. Organizations can also plan community events and friendly competitions focused on quality-related themes. This collaborative spirit strengthens the values, attitudes, and behaviors that promote a dedication to excellence and continuous improvement.
Uniting Quality Expectations on a Shared Campus
Overall, I believe the benefits of a dynamic, multi-tenant environment have great potential to enhance quality culture, outweighing any challenges that may emerge. However, bringing outside organizations or other community members onto a legacy company campus introduces a few compliance-related complexities.
The issues arise around shared regulated spaces, utilities, and support services, such as utility plants, shared warehouses, pest control, and security services. A proactive approach helps ensure that these utilities, services, and spaces are managed appropriately to address each organization’s unique compliance requirements. The first step is to identify an owner who is ultimately responsible for the operations, performance, maintenance, and quality. The responsible party is typically the landlord who owns the facility, but sometimes a space such as a shared warehouse or a central utility building may be managed by a tenant.
To ensure that everyone has the same understanding of the quality expectations of regulated systems, the owner and all tenants should establish an agreement that lays out all expectations for how the space or service must be managed to provide compliance.
The agreement must also set forth the involved parties’ mutual understandings regarding certain responsibilities, specifying how each duty will be managed, supported, and maintained against the highest quality standards. This agreement should also specify relevant regulatory bodies because each company occupying a shared campus may face different compliance obligations based on their products and where they sell them. For example, a company that exports its products to the UK, Latin America or other geographies faces different regulations than one that sells only in the US.
Additionally, the agreement should lay out the requirements for how the space, system or service must be managed. No issue is too small – the more specific the requirements are, the better. The following examples illustrate some sample issues that might be covered by a quality agreement in a shared campus:
- Central utility plant: Depending on the type of companies operating on campus, a plant may provide a variety of utility services, such as chilled water, steam, compressed air, purified water, and more. Many of those utilities may be classified as FDA-regulated services by some companies but not others, making it imperative that the quality agreement establish which utilities are considered regulated. Then the agreement can outline the roles and responsibilities to comply with regulatory expectations, such as operational parameter monitoring, sampling of the utilities, and a well-documented preventative maintenance plan.
- Pest control: Even a company with a robust pest control program could face an infestation if its neighbor is too lax with its own program, making it critical that all tenants adhere to the same minimum quality requirements. The agreement might include rules specifying the frequency of inspections, who will maintain historical trends, where to place rodent bait stations, service frequency, and other similar details.
- Security: Because regulatory agencies require that all manufacturing locations be secured, every life sciences company must outline a security plan to ensure that only authorized and qualified people can access manufacturing suites. Security measures may include a variety of physical controls, such as door locks, as well as security personnel. The landlord may have a security team that oversees the perimeter and common areas that are open to the public, such as parks, but every company must have its own security plan as well.
- Common warehouse: Whether a warehouse is managed by a landlord or a tenant, it may be open for multiple companies to use. The quality agreement should outline which sections of the space are allocated to each tenant, what types of consumables, materials, products, etc. can be stored there, and any conditions that must be met to provide an adequate controlled environment. In addition, physical separation between allocated spaces, such as cages or demising walls, must be in place between each tenant.
- Quality management system: Each party must have a quality management system (QMS) in place that documents processes, procedures, and responsibilities for achieving quality policies and objectives. This QMS will help coordinate and direct activities to meet company and regulatory requirements while improving its effectiveness and efficiency on a continuous basis. The agreement must identify the QMS components that will be utilized by each party to ensure compliance with regulations and the provision of products, space, and services in the most cost- and resource-efficient manner.
Of course, it is not enough to simply have a quality agreement in place. Each party must have a quality assurance group that owns the agreement and assures that responsible parties complete work per applicable industry regulations. This group will conduct routine audits to monitor compliance and take ultimate responsibility for upholding the company’s commitment to quality.
Seizing the Opportunity for Campus Reinvention
Repurposing a life sciences campus can challenge old notions of what a campus should look like and demonstrate how modern and forward-looking spaces can be. I have seen firsthand that enlivening a campus with social events, amenities, and new tenants can create an environment where talent thrives.
For biopharma leaders, reinvigorating a legacy campus provides an immense opportunity to fortify quality culture. With a proactive approach to quality assurance, companies can fulfill compliance obligations and create a happier, more committed workforce in the process.
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