In my experience of working in both academic and industrial laboratories, I believe there is a definite difference in the amount of resources available to each lab which then directly affects the scope, timeframe, and people involved within the project. Regarding an academic laboratory, the work schedule is generally much more lax and research is only done when grant money can be obtained for their unique ideas. In addition, as mentioned by Scott, in my lab there were numerous undergraduate and graduate researchers that have not perfected their GLP skills yet and mistakes were often which slowed progress.

This can be contrasted to industry where, in largest companies, money is generally no object. The scientists and workers are the very best that money can buy and with that comes a level of professionalism that is unparalleled in any other setting. This results smartest minds along with excellent laboratory practices which sped up research in both quality and time hours logged greatly increasing efficiency.

As for deadlines, in my experience, academia generally accepts the delays and if an individual isn’t doing an excellent job, they are reassigned to a different task. This contrasts my company I am at now where they had executed two general options. First, they let go all underperforming employees and then they elected to double their initial workforce to get back on track to ensure the delay does not occur again.