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Issue link: https://ccr-mag.epubxp.com/i/190248
Looking up "A big part of what we're doing right now is making sure we are meeting our clients' time frames. … We want to make sure we have the labor to do that and get everything set up, in line and ready to go." – Haylee Linduff, P&C; Construction Lynnette Gannaway, Choice Hotels: We have a lot of exciting things going on right now. We recently announced a large incentive program for our franchisee base, specifcally in the Comfort family of brands. One of my biggest challenges is to make sure our vendors are ready to support our franchisees as they begin to take advantage of this incentive program. We have to make sure we have vendors that truly can support hotels in all 50 states, and do so with good return on investment. That's a unique challenge. It takes a lot of support because there are lots of individual franchisees out there and they don't know which vendors they are going to choose to use in the mix of our packages. Right now our brands team is working through the people who have applied for this incentive program. They are doing the proft improvement plans, while I work on the back side with the vendors to make sure that we have the right mix. For our Sleep In brand, we're a couple years out from having issued a new prototype. Our design team recently went out to visit with our franchisees that have built those buildings. We're going back to those prototypical plans to make some adjustments based on the franchisee comments. Haylee Linduff, P&C; Construction: We do pretty much every type of construction, from remodels to scrape and rebuilds, new 58 construction and tenant build-outs. We can certainly feel the shrink in the construction time frame. The majority of the work is with repeat clients. We build great relationships with our clients. A big part of what we're doing right now is making sure we are meeting our clients' time frames. With the different industries that we work in, these can be anywhere from a year- to two-year projects. If it's a weekend, you can work from from when the store closes till 5 a.m. Everything must be cleaned and ready for the open of business again. On the projects we used to get fve weeks for, we might now get seven days. We want to make sure we have the labor to do that and get everything set up, in line and ready to go. We have a lot of different projects going at one time and all over the country, so we have to make sure our subs are ready. Everything has to be on the same page. Sherene Kutach, Francesca's Collections: For our construction department, one of the biggest challenges we're working with is fnding the right vendors. There are four new construction managers and there's one of me, so fnding the right sign companies that can think of something before we do is good. We have an amazing fooring company that does that. Finding those perfect vendors help make our job a little easier. We don't have to have a team of 20. CommerCial ConstruCtion & renovation — September : OctOber 2013