A company can either hire a permanent member of staff to advise it on GMP or make use of an independent consulting firm. There are many factors which make the latter choice the better one.

Firstly, it costs much less to hire an independent GMP consultant than it does to employ an in-house staff member. Unless there is a huge medical occurrence, you will only need a consultant two to four times a year. For a full time employee their starting salary would be in the region of £60,000

Price is only one of the benefits of independent consultants. The range of knowledge of GMP consultants is vast. Not only do they know a lot about science and the drugs themselves but they have technical and legal knowledge too. There are usually 10 or more consultants to every firm and you hire all of them when you hire the firm.

They advise companies on many aspects of business. Whenever a company needs to communicate with the FDA or other governing institution a consultant can help with this. If new regulations have been brought in a consultant can help with any troubleshooting. If there are legal issues which need addressing, a consultant can help with this. Validation, which is a major aspect of drug development and GMP, can also be worked on so that companies can keep excellent records of everything they have manufactured.

No pharmaceutical company would be able to stay on top of every new GMP regulation without the aid of GMP consulting firms. There is simply too much knowledge and experience required which a company would have to pay hundreds of thousands of pounds for if they were to hire permanent staff.