How Customers Benefit From Program Teams at Grace FCMS

Each customer has a program team with a designated program manager

Customers choose to partner with Grace’s Fine Chemical Manufacturing Services (Grace’s FCMS) because of its expertise in manufacturing chemicals at every stage of the drug discovery and development process. Grace’s customers may bring a program in the early stages of manufacturing, where compounds are developed at the bench and moved into small batch production. Customers can also bring commercial processes for optimization in partnership with Grace’s FCMS.

Program teams at Grace’s FCMS work with customers starting from a proposal or contract signing. They also collaborate with customers on an ongoing basis during production. In this blog, two program managers share what customers can expect from this process and relationship. Chemical engineer Megan Kuikstra has worked at Grace’s FCMS for 12 years, moving into program management in 2016. Curt Saxton, also a chemical engineer, has been with the company since 2014 and a program manager for 3 years. 

Who is on a program team, and how do customers interact with the team?

Kuikstra: Once a customer signs a contract, a dedicated team is put together with a program manager, analytical services, R&D, and engineering and quality staff members. In the background, we have regulatory support and process safety support. All team members are based in the US. My job as program manager is to be the customer's direct line of communication with Grace’s FCMS, to be one point of contact if they need anything or have questions. The program manager also monitors the timeline and ensures that the scope of work is being executed for that project.

Throughout the program, we schedule weekly or biweekly calls, and customers have direct contact with the technical teams on our side. Customers appreciate that they get to communicate directly with the folks doing the work.

How do program teams contribute to successful customer support at Grace’s FCMS?

Kuikstra: Initial kickoff meetings, internally and then with the customer, set project expectations. There's a lot of internal collaboration behind the scenes to make sure everything is going as planned. Plus, there are a lot of people in the background who are not necessarily customer-facing who are heavily involved with the project. It's my responsibility to know where a project stands, to communicate any concerns or share where we are on the timeline, and to do that as early as we have that information. We pride ourselves on being a good partner to meet their needs. When you have that kind of working relationship with your customers, it is so much easier and more efficient to get things done.

How does a program team’s expertise improve collaboration?

Saxton: Some of our engineers have been here 10 years, while some of our R&D and quality team members have been here over 20. With this stability, our team has developed excellent working relationships with customers, along with a wealth of process development knowledge. We leverage this expertise to recognize problem areas in a process and mitigate those before we run at scale. This is especially important when processes need to scale rapidly and be ready to validate without running multiple demonstration batches. For customers, the combined expertise of a program team means processing may be easier and more robust, manufacturing runs faster, and the product has a better yield and purity.

Why does it help to have program managers with engineering backgrounds?

Saxton: Former process engineers have the advantage of being very familiar with the process equipment and how a plant functions. This aids in scheduling, knowing risk areas, or even just being able to describe how the equipment works. This last example became more valuable during the pandemic when there were minimal opportunities for customers to complete physical site visits. If you aren’t familiar with a plant, it can be difficult to understand what you are looking at over a video call. We were able to help bridge that gap.