Facility Operations,Outsourcing

Outsourcing animal care services to specialized contractors can lead to labor and cost savings. A clear understanding of your own needs and what a contractor can offer will help you decide the best strategy for your organization.

Continuing budget pressures and increasing technical and regulatory requirements have meant that increasingly, administrators who are responsible for laboratory animal care at both universities and pharmaceutical firms are turning to specialized contractors for the on-site operation of their animal husbandry and veterinary support programs. The federal government has recognized the benefits of this approach as on-site contractors are successfully providing laboratory animal care support at a number of agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, Center for Disease Control, Food and Drug Administration, NASA, the EPA, and the US Army. This article will present some of the economic and technical reasons for using an on-site contractor to provide laboratory animal care and review a number of issues that should be considered when selecting a contractor. A number of companies provide on-site laboratory animal care; they allow you to bring a combination of experience and expertise to your situation that is often greater than what is currently available. Ten generally accepted reasons an organization would consider outsourcing include:

1. Reduction and control of operating costs
2. Improvements in the organization’s focus
3. Access to world-class capabilities
4. Free internal resources for other purposes
5. Resources are not available internally
6. Acceleration of reengineering benefits
7. Internal functions are difficult to manage or are out of control
8. Capital funds are made available
9. Risks are shared
10. Infusion of cash

Although developed for business in general, these ten reasons hold for just about any organization that currently operates a vivarium. An eleventh reason may be particularly appropriate to the laboratory animal care industry. According to the Institute of Laboratory Animal Care (ILAR), recruitment and retention of animal care professionals have become major issues for most institutions. Recruitment of trained, experienced staff members was seen as highly or moderately important by 66% of the institutes surveyed. Retention of animal care technicians is important because well-trained, experienced animal care professionals are key to an organization’s ability to deliver efficient and quality services. High turnover rates are expensive because of high training costs and lack of productivity of newly hired technicians.

Outsourcing, the use of on-site contractors, is a strategy that an organization can use to attain labor-cost savings and unburden internal administrative and supervisory systems since it is the contractor who assumes responsibility for recruitment, retention, and training new employees. A smart organization will tie contract performance to quantifiable benchmarks in each of these areas.