Commercial Construction & Renovation

SEP-OCT 2013

Commercial Construction & Renovation helps our subscribers design, build and maintain better commercial facilities by delivering content to meet the information needs of today's high-level executives.

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Looking up CCR: What's the most pressing item on your to-do list? Amanda Petter, Francesca's Collections: We're at the end of our build season. We plan to open about 80 to 85 stores. There are four of us who actually do all the new stores, so it's all about time management, making sure everybody's on the schedule, getting all the GCs ready to go [etc.]. We're going through a rebranding, updating all the current locations and changing to the new concept. Beth-Ann Rosenbluth, Sargenti Architects: We're expanding our offce divisions because we have so many national clients. We plan to do more offce; restaurants and multifamily projects, so expanding our base will help with this. Bibi Sukey, H&M;: All of our building construction is bunched during the autumn and fall period. So, we get our construction documentation done from May to the beginning of August. We have four MSA architects that do the West Coast alone. Our stores are anywhere from 18,000 to 30,000 square feet – multi-level and single-level structures. [Right now] we're implementing a lean construction method, which means we get our contractors and they're subcontractors in one room and organically create a project schedule. They create a schedule they can agree to, and then fnd ways to make the construction effort more effcient. Construction hasn't changed for the past probably 20 to 30 years. Everybody is building the same way, layer after layer. We're trying to fnd ways to reduce the hand-off, and then reduce the punch items to turn over a clean store for merchandizing. We have found that a project that was planned for 12 weeks can get done in 10. But everybody has to buy into this. Can we get the staff in time, recruit enough people for support and fnd the building materials our designers want. With products procured from all over the world, metal products from Asia, carpet from Persia, tile from Italy [etc.], we just have to hope they make it through custom on time for installation. There are a lot of different segments that can have a domino effect. Kim Whalen, Heart of America Group: We're in a frestorm right now. Over the past year, we've franchised one of our restaurant concepts, which will open soon. So, we're learning how to support a franchise, which we've devoted a lot of time and energy to. We have several more in the works. We do all of the architectural for them, so we are doing a design for these restaurants, which are in hotels. We also [opened] our own hotel [in September] and have a 14-acre retail site we're building, so we're working on those, too. It's defnitely a frestorm every day. We build, own and operate, but the retail development is our frst – delivering each unit to a retailer in a different base. Our inhouse architects are very busy right now. Amy Ralph, BCBG: We've been working on our shop-in-shop concept, working with the design to see it all fts into the different department stores. Bloomingdale has a different set of criteria than Macy's or Gordon Taylor does. We've been working on fxture packages. We also have a refresh model we're working on for our older stores. We are working to identify which stores had which concept. Heidi Vassalotti, Crossville: I'm hearing a recurring theme about compressed construction schedules, something we are very familiar with. As a domestic manufacturer, we're comfortable with that sort of 46 CommerCial ConstruCtion & renovation — September : OctOber 2013

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