James Witty, collaboration solutions manager, Autodesk offers advice on how to keep on top of retail construction projects.
The successful management of large retail construction projects requires many skills. A good juggling technique, for example. And the knack of remaining calm under pressure. Plus, the ability to see into the future, perhaps – and the patience of a saint.
Because competition in retail is so fierce, schedules tend to be tighter than for general commercial buildings. Needless to say, so do cost margins. Yet, in few other industries do you have so many multiple building projects happening at the same time, but at different stages and often over a wide geographical area.
The pressure to open the doors and get the cash machines up and running is acute. With budgets stretched, nobody wants expensive delays, missed revenue, disappointed staff and disillusioned customers.
Increasingly, retailers with multiple concurrent projects such as Somerfield, Ikea and the Acardia Group are ignoring expensive and complex project management software and instead installing online collaborative solutions. But, navigating the maze of suitable products can be enough to put off even the most determined of buyers.
So how do you decide? Here are my five recommendations on what to look for…
1. Choose a construction-focused solution
Like any sector, the building industry has its own special requirements. For example, your chosen solution needs to be able to cope with large format drawings. The best construction industry-focused solutions such as Autodesk Buzzsaw also include viewing and markup tools for design files, including DWG, DWF, DXF and DGN file formats. This means clients or non-CAD trained staff can review designs downloaded from a central site and the comments can be brought back automatically into the CAD file.
Some also include forms such as RFIs, submittals, change order requests, daily reports and Architect’s Supplemental Instructions (ASIs).
By choosing a solution specifically developed to suit the way you work, it saves trying to customise “vanilla” software with all the time and expense this can entail. And, if you choose a solution that is widely used for retail construction projects, contractors and suppliers are more likely to have used it before and, therefore are more willing to co-operate.
2. It must be fast and easy to deploy …
Some solutions take days to install – others take hours. Often a decision isn’t taken to use software until drawings and documents snowball and the team gets totally overwhelmed. Then you need something fast – and something that can help you get organised quickly.
Many project management solutions are expensive enough to need board-level decisions to buy – they may involve significant overheads with specialised consultants and almost certainly will require you to invest in training courses. This expenditure means you will be locked into that particular solution for years to come. Far better to consider something more flexible that can start offering value almost immediately.
3. …And easy to use
Using project management solutions means changing the way people work. But not everybody who need access to information will be particularly sophisticated when it comes to IT. A complete range of people from solicitors, estate agents and legal teams to plumbers, carpenters and bricklayers may need to download information in this way.
RPA, design and construction consultant to some of the best-known high street retail names including Dixons, Footlocker, Tommy Hilfiger, Dunhill, Currys and PC World, uses Buzzsaw collaborative project management solution. Neil Curtin, IT systems administrator says that one of the reasons RPA’s use of the service has been so successful is that the solution is quick to deploy and easy to use. “Not everyone we ask to use it is a computer buff by any means, but it only takes us 10 to 15 minutes to explain to them how to use it,” he says.
Kelly Hudd of store development, The Somerfield Group thinks the same way: “We make our solution available to anyone who needs to view the drawing. For example, our shelving suppliers now have access so they can see drawings as soon as they are issued and start preparing a quote.
“Initially, there was some slight reluctance, but once everyone saw how simple it was and how easy it was to find everything, they are more than happy to use it. After all, it’s just like using Windows Explorer and most people are able to do that,” she says.
4. Information on demand, round the clock
These days with mobile phones, email and text we expect communication to be almost instant. However, until recently, this certainly wasn’t the case in the building industry. Drawings had to be printed and then posted or couriered to their destination – often a site office. This could take days, weeks even.
However, if you choose an online project collaboration solution, drawings and other documents are available round the clock, wherever you may happen to be in the world. This means once a drawing is finished it is immediately available to the authorised team. When changes are made, there are no hold-ups while new versions are issued.
This is something Curtin at RPA really values: “With clients that have major expansion strategies and tight deadlines, knowing that as soon as a document is finished it can be made immediately available to whoever needs it, wherever they are in the world, really speeds up our workflow and helps us meet their timescales,” he says.
5. Fast ROI
Last, but certainly not least, look for a solution that can give you a tangible return on your investment. For example, printing and delivering may sound like an incidental overhead, but can in fact add up to a significant chunk of budget. Some users of online collaboration solutions say that they save hundreds of thousands of pounds a year in printing and postage costs.
This is without considering the time saved. “Before, if someone asked for 20 copies of a package of drawings, you had to write off two or three hours at least of project time. Now the printers can pick up only the relevant documents directly from our Buzzsaw site and just get on with it,” says Suzanne Clark, project manager at Lafferty Project Management, responsible for Dundrum, Ireland’s largest shopping centre.
“The biggest challenges in store development involve driving costs out of the equation, becoming more efficient and taking time out of the process. Online collaboration, if done rightly, can do just that,” says a recent study by the Gartner Group.
The choice is yours – but bear these five guidelines in mind and you won’t go far wrong.
