ICQ will be attending the American Pharma Outsourcing Summit 2018 at the Crown Plaza Hotel, Cherry Hill, NJ

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The American Pharmaceutical Outsourcing Summit is designed to provide pharma outsourcing executives with current trends, strategic insights and best practices in manufacturing, outsourcing, capacity management, quality assurance, quality control, regulatory compliance, operation excellence, supply chain, and logistics. Network with over 150 of your peers as we explore strategies to maximize efficiency while remaining compliant in an ever-evolving environment.


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Michael Gatta, Principal of ICQ Consultants will be hosting a round table discussion: “Challenges to Maintain Consistency of Validation Practices from the Operating Company  to the CMO.”

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Please stop in and meet the team from ICQ at booth 16 at this years American Pharma Outsourcing Summit held on October 2nd and 3rd at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Cherry Hill, NJ.


 

ICQ Consultants continues to grow….

ICQ Consultants continues to expand, hiring for several new positions in Greater  Boston, Greater Baltimore, and Greater San Francisco Areas. If  you NowHiringare considering a career change, we would love to hear from you. Visit our Career page today!


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Thank you for visiting!

ISPE BannerThank you to everyone for stopping by and visiting with ICQ at the 2018 ISPE Product Show, it was great to see new faces and re-connect with old friends.  Congratulations to the winners of our giveaways, we look forward to connecting with you all again!ISPE Booth

 

ICQ Total Benefit Compensation Package – Better Insurance and More time Off!

ICQ Total Benefit Compensation Package

Happy Worker

Did you know the average monthly premium for a family plan for health insurance nationwide is $833.00 per month? Since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, Americans who make a certain level of income and are without health insurance have been financially penalized. ICQ provides premium free health insurance to all of its full time W2 employees. The total compensation package for someone making $104,000.00 per year or $50.00 per hour is equivalent to making $133, 244.92 per year or $64.06 per hour.


ICQ Bench-marked Benefits Against Competitors

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Identifying System Boundaries in a few easy steps: so easy a cave man can do it!

Identifying System Boundaries in a few easy steps: so easy a cave man can do it!

CavemanSystem boundaries are the foundation of the Engineering lifecycle.  These boundaries identify where one system ends and another begins.  System boundaries define the scope of a system and assist in the management of Validation, Maintenance and Change Management processes.  Without these boundaries defined, the chances of omitting components or lines during validation or maintenance increases which can increase your chances for a regulatory finding. Identifying boundaries on the Process and Instrumentation Diagrams (P&IDs) is ideal to ensure that they are also aligned with maintenance activities, but at a minimum these boundaries should be clearly called out within the scope of the commissioning and qualification protocols.

The task of identifying system boundaries seems like it should be easy to accomplish, however there are several things to consider ensuring that boundaries are defined consistently to all systems.

  • Does this system supply multiple systems (water, steam, …)?
  • Is your system a packaged system or skid (autoclave, washer, chromatography skid, …)?
  • Does your system supply critical and non-critical systems (Clean compressed air vs. instrument air)?

Here are a few best practices and tips to make the decision process easier if they are not predefined on P&IDs:

  • For utilities, use the last valve prior to the system being supplied and include that valve as part of the supply utility.  This valve could be used as a Lock Out Tag Out (LOTO) point for that utility.
  • For skids and packages systems, you can use the advice above, or use the physical connections to the system such as tri-clamp connections or flanges,
  • For critical/non-critical systems, like air or HVAC systems, use the filter as your boundary between systems. 

Though there are many ways to approach and define system boundaries, we hope this will give you a few ideas on how to approach them. 

Article by: Tim Johnson, Managing Consultant, ICQ Consultants Corp.

ICQ Consultants New Applicant Sourcing Platform with Client Portal…

ICQ Consultants is excited to announce its New Applicant Sourcing Platform with Client Portal.

Community_66884141The ICQ Applicant Sourcing Platform is a cutting edge approach to sourcing, hiring and placement of resources that connects our recruiting team directly to prospective candidates and clients. It offers a live snapshot of ICQs career openings, projects, and hiring needs with automated workflows offering a seamless method for clients and ICQ to identify highly qualified candidates.

The applicant sourcing platform offers numerous benefits by use of an advanced job board integration capability that streamlines the hiring process. This simplifies the candidate sourcing and job posting process which allows ICQ to better target recruitment and save significant amounts of time and effort. ICQ can source the right candidates and post jobs to numerous Job Boards like Dice, Monster, CareerBuilder, LinkedIn, Facebook, Simply Hired, Twitter and more.

The ICQ Client Portal provides direct access for clients to seamlessly post jobs, identify industry specific skills and competencies, review applicants, screen/interview and make final selections through the entire sourcing process.

The ICQ Applicant Sourcing Platform and associated client portal provides so many benefits to our clients:

  • Increases Flexibility due to a web based portal being available for 24/7 access. Now clients can search for candidates when the time fits their schedules.
  • Provides Convenient Access due to the portals cloud based platform and availability for use on any device.Career Portal
  • Improves Communication through our integrated workflow process that provides clarity during the whole candidate sourcing process from screening, to interviews and final selection of candidates.
  • Incorporates an Industry Specific Skills Matrix allowing clients to specifically target skills and experience to match their project or staff augmentation needs.
  • Automated Process eliminates the tedious task of parsing through resumes to find the best candidates – instead the portal searches the database and submits a list of candidates that match the requirements you identified.
  • Job Board Integration simplifies our efforts to source the best candidates. Now we not only push open jobs up to boards but also pull in candidates that match criteria then invite them to register in our career portal by a simple click of a button.
  • Total Control and Alignment allows the clients to register, log on and generate jobs themselves using our industry specific skills matrix that becomes the basis of the search criteria for candidates.

The ICQ applicant sourcing platform is an engineered program designed to improve the candidate sourcing process, and will ultimately provide value to our employees, prospective candidates and clients alike.

For more information on this game changing program or to obtain access please email us: [email protected]

Join our network, follow us, like us and share this on LinkedIn, Google +, Twitter and Facebook so you can see other new and exciting news and discussions being posted by ICQ Consultants. Or visit our website and get and in depth view of what we are all about: http://icqconsultants.com.

ICQ Consultants New Applicant Sourcing Platform with Career Portal…

ICQ Consultants is excited to announce its New Applicant Sourcing Platform with Career Portal.

Community_66884141The ICQ Applicant Sourcing Platform is a cutting edge approach to sourcing, hiring and placement of resources that connects our recruiting team directly to prospective candidates and clients. It offers a live snapshot of ICQs career openings, projects, and hiring needs with automated workflows offering a seamless method for clients and ICQ to identify highly qualified candidates.

The applicant sourcing platform offers numerous benefits by use of an advanced job board integration capability that streamlines the hiring process. This simplifies the candidate sourcing and job posting process which allows ICQ to better target recruitment and save significant amounts of time and effort. ICQ can source the right candidates and post jobs to numerous Job Boards like Dice, Monster, CareerBuilder, LinkedIn, Facebook, Simply Hired, Twitter and more.

The ICQ Career Portal provides direct access for candidates to seamlessly search for jobs, identify their industry specific skills and competencies, apply for jobs, and review their application status through the entire sourcing process.

The ICQ Applicant Sourcing Platform and associated career portal provides so many benefits to our candidates:

  • Automatic Job Notifications once the portal matches your skills and competencies to any of the jobs posted.Career Portal_101330689
  • Increased Flexibility is provided since you can identify your availability and the system will notify you prior to that time to request updated profile information.
  • Increased Visibility and Exposure to all open positions and clients. Clients can view reports with your qualifications that match their job requirements.
  • Transparent Process lets the candidate track their job application throughout the entire process.

The ICQ applicant sourcing platform is an engineered program designed to improve the candidate sourcing process, and will ultimately provide value to our employees, prospective candidates and clients alike.

For more information on this game changing program or to obtain access please email us: [email protected]

Join our network, follow us, like us and share this on LinkedIn, Google +, Twitter and Facebook so you can see other new and exciting news and discussions being posted by ICQ Consultants. Or visit our website and get and in depth view of what we are all about: http://icqconsultants.com.

Paul Vitale of ICQ Consultants to Retire this June 2018

Say it isn’t so….Paul Vitale of ICQ Consultants is retiring.

I am both selfishly sad that I will no longer work with one of the best and most well-respected engineering professionals in the industry and delightfully happy for Paul and his family.   His family has had to share Paul with his passion for work, travel schedules and late nights but no longer. They have endured many nights without his guidance, direction, and contagious laughter.  

Over the years while working with Paul I have learned so much. Not only has Paul become a dear friend and colleague but he has been a mentor to me personally and professionally. Bar none Paul is one of the most dedicated employees any company could ask for and displayed unwavering patience albeit with a bit more passion than most – but unwavering none the less. I have to say, the highlight of our days were the times when we had the opportunity to annoy Paul on a daily basis..lol. All the years of hard work, stress, meetings and taxing projects deliverables are now over.

Please join me in wishing Paul good luck and many thanks. 

You can sit back, relax and enjoy life at your own pace. Congratulations on your retirement Paul!

 

ICQ will be attending the PDA New England Chapter Dinner Event and Facility Tour.

dinner meeting.pngPlease join ICQ for the next New England PDA Dinner Meeting.  The meeting “Future Trends in Manufacturing” with Venkatesh Natarajan and Aaron Noyes will be held on Wednesday, March 14th at Millipore Sigma in Burlington MA.

NEPDA is offering an opportunity to visit MilliporeSigma’s new, state of the art M LabTM Collaboration Center in Burlington, MA. Inside the M LabTM, you can see pilot and process development labs containing biomanufacturing equipment used in multiple unit operations including upstream single-use bioreactors and clarification tools as well as downstream chromatographic purification and tangential flow concentration systems. The M LabTM Collaboration Center is a place where visitors have the freedom to explore applications and run experiments in an innovative, non-GMP environment.

ICQ will be a gold sponsor and we would love to connect with you at the event!

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ICQ Consultants Announcement: Paul Provencal joins ICQ Consultants as Director of Sales and Commercial Operations.

P2As we embark into a new year we already see many opportunities for ICQ Consultants. In the past 10 years we have achieved considerable growth and understand that to sustain the current business, we need to continue our relentless focus on attracting top talent to directly support our clients so they can meet their goals in serving their patients. So, with our continued growth, we realize the need to attract additional top talent to compliment our management team and would like to welcome Paul Provencal to ICQ.

Paul is a very thoughtful, experienced and approachable technical professional that shares our common goals to focus on long term relationships with our clients and present a higher level of services. Paul has proven capabilities performing at a high level with a technical background in manufacturing, commissioning, qualification, validation, and management. In addition to his hands on experience Paul has several years of successfully and actively working in sales within the life science industry. Paul comes to ICQ Consultants as our Director of Sales and Commercial Operations.

Please join me in welcoming Paul to our team as he will be instrumental in the continued success of ICQ!

Temperature Mapping 101

58d17f22d349f95f008b5dfa-gifTemperature mapping is essential for working with temperature sensitive products such as food and pharmaceuticals. Its vital for verifying temperature controlled units/ areas such as fridges, freezers , cold rooms and warehouses. Temperature mapping is the process of using  probes to aggregate data of a temperature fluctuations of a controlled system due to various changes e.g open doors and product stored. The true purpose of temperature mapping is to find the place within the storage unit the greatest difference in temperature to assess way to fix/adjust the units setpoints to achieve the appropriate temperature. This locations is considered a worst case location. In the pharmaceutical/food industry it’s common to have an external probe with a sheath or sand in the worst case location.  The buffer is used to mimic packaging of the product albeit drugs or food. These external monitoring probes are usually connected to a BAS (Building Automation System) / PCS (Process Control System)  to monitors and alarm when the unit is out of tolerance. This is essential for a contingency plan if the unit were to Emergency_Lightfail and contents within storage container can be moved to an emergency location. Make sure to check back of other events and blogs for Integrated Commission and Qualification Inc.

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Written By: Joel Mowatt, Engineer II

ICQ Consultants Corp.

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