Clinical-Sample Export-Custody Recovery Leader

The mandate

The organisation operates specimen logistics across 76 sites, managing pharmacokinetic and biomarker samples that require controlled processing and temperature windows before reaching central laboratories. The role must establish defensible custody chains linking participant, visit, tube, aliquot, shipment and accession, coordinate site courier handovers that capture sample identity rather than piece counts alone, and align permit arrangements and dry-ice capacity with collection schedules. Sponsors require confidence in data usability across the network.

The leader must arrive in Johannesburg within ten days for a six-month fixed term. The first two weeks will identify samples in motion, hold unsupported dispatches and establish daily site-to-lab control for the highest-consequence protocols. By day 60, all active trials must use common readiness and exception gates. Two complete shipment cycles per region and one cancelled-flight exercise precede a four-week successor induction.

Handover is accepted when every active sample can be traced through authorised kit, participant and visit identity, collection, processing clock, aliquot, storage, permit, packout, custody, temperature, arrival and central-lab accession; every missed window has prompt scientific disposition; and eight consecutive weeks show no avoidable loss from logistics control. The successor receives open deviations, unusable-sample decisions, country restrictions, courier limits and the next protocol and holiday calendar.

The interim may stop a company-controlled sample dispatch, change approved courier or routing, prioritise dry ice and kit supply, require resampling escalation and approve recovery spend up to ZAR 25 million. Investigators retain participant and collection decisions; laboratory and sponsor scientists own sample usability; Quality owns deviations; authorities control export; couriers own safe carriage; the chief operating officer approves network exit or material contract changes.

Clinical-site activation, participant consent, protocol design, assay validation, scientific interpretation, regulatory submission and long-term laboratory selection are outside scope. The leader must preserve coded participant confidentiality and cannot make a missing custody event disappear through a generic shipment statement. This seat restores the time, identity and condition chain that gives authorised scientists enough evidence to decide whether a sample remains usable.

Why this seat is open

The dismissal followed repeated specimen loss and a sponsor escalation that crossed country and functional boundaries. Clinical operations saw visits, logistics saw boxes and laboratories saw accession, leaving no executive accountable for the complete sample. A temporary leader is required through immediate containment and permanent recruitment because several irreplaceable collection windows remain active.

What you will own

• Reconcile active samples across participant code, visit, tube, aliquot, processing, storage, permit, shipment and accession identity.
• Command site readiness before collection, joining kits, equipment, trained staff, courier cut-off, export authority and laboratory availability.
• Stop unsupported dispatch and route decisions while preserving investigator, scientific, Quality and public-authority ownership.
• Establish custody and temperature events that track sample identity rather than parcel count through every physical handover.
• Recover dry-ice, freezer, flight and permit contingencies against protocol-specific processing and stability clocks.
• Exercise a cancelled flight and delayed export clearance across representative ambient, refrigerated and frozen specimens.
• Induct the successor through live shipment control, sponsor disputes, open deviations and the next country-protocol calendar.

Candidate qualifications

• Held global or regional clinical-sample logistics authority across trial sites, couriers, depots and central laboratories.
• Has contained irreplaceable specimen loss involving processing time, temperature, export permit, identity or accession failure.
• Understands visits, kits, centrifugation, aliquots, stability, coded identity, dry ice, customs and laboratory intake operationally.
• Can restore custody without assuming investigator, scientific-usability, Quality, privacy or authority decision rights.
• Has challenged sponsors and couriers using sample-level evidence rather than airway bill or parcel delivery status.
• Completed permanent handover after time-critical specimen controls survived multiple country cycles and one transport disruption.