PSCI is a group of pharmaceutical and healthcare companies who share a vision of better social, health, safety, and environmental outcomes in the communities where they operate. These companies have joined forces to promote responsible supply chain management and better business conditions across the industry. WSP is one of fourteen professional, independent third-party audit firms that have been approved to perform PSCI Audits. In 2017, we were approved as an Environment, Health and Safety (EHS) Assessor. Since that time, our team has successfully completed hundreds of assessments for global companies around the world.
For this pharmaceutical company’s project, our EHS team completed more than 100 PSCI assessments in 28 countries using a “hub and spoke” approach, where client communications were maintained through a single Global Program Manager (“the hub”). This “hub” served as the primary contact and worked through various communication channels (“the spokes”) with our EHS teams around the world to deliver consistent professional services within the respective project countries, using local languages and auditing customs.
Regular program reviews with the client supported continuous improvements in terms of audit planning and communications, technical quality, project delivery timeline, and overall site audit experience. Cost-efficiency was achieved by structuring the project team with a mix of strategic, technical, and administrative staff sharing a common project management platform that enabled centralized coordination and performance tracking of each individual audit.
One of the key challenges in this assignment was confirming that a consistent risk ranking system was being applied by different assessors and being consistently interpreted by the client and its suppliers. This alignment was only made possible with a rigorous and committed communications program that was supported by the various client and WSP team functions.
In addition to the assessments, our team was also involved in the review of the proposed and completed follow-up corrective actions, in which both the client and its suppliers had to mutually recognize and agree to the relative constraints and benefits of the corrective actions. Our work is ongoing, and we are proud to be playing an active part in the client’s journey to achieve sustainable growth within the pharmaceutical industry.
This work was performed by Golder professionals who joined WSP in an acquisition completed in 2021.
