As a retail property maintenance specialist, we have a certain pride in helping our customers to extend the life of the many fixtures and fittings in their premises. But there comes a time when you have to consider replacing rather than maintaining. When that happens, our track record in handling such projects makes choosing our services not just logical but also highly beneficial too.
A good example is a long-term customer of ours and the HVAC systems in one of their locations. As a very well-known brand in luxury fashions and accessories, delivering a perfect temperature controlled environment for customers to browse in comfort is hugely important. This was however becoming a problem at this particular property. The system itself was over fifteen years’ old – some way past the usual operating lifecycle. And while our ongoing maintenance can be credited with making it work for longer than expected, it was no longer efficient and becoming increasingly susceptible to faults, with parts harder to procure for the old systems.
As this was starting to impact the customer experience, and the risk of the system suffering a complete failure was increasing, they decided to have a new heating and air conditioning solution, replacing the old dated units with their modern replacements. Such a project can be quite involved for any retailer, needing careful planning and requiring different trades to be involved, all working together. But for a premium brand there was another critical factor. That was to deliver the new HVAC system installation efficiently and with absolute minimal disruption.
Our customer entrusted us to undertake the project management along with the shopfitters handling the installation programme and the HVAC engineers performing the setup and commissioning. With three parties involved it would be critical that all parties had a complete view of the project and could easily talk to each other. Failure to achieve this can result in key tasks being missed, details overlooked, and a new HVAC system not working to its full potential.
Key to ensuring the project would run smoothly is to deliver and maintain highly effective communication between the teams. To enable this, we connected the project with the BMS system. By doing this we had a single source of information around the project which the teams could access and understand what was required from them along with energy management and logging to enable them to understand where further savings could be made in the future. Filtration was also upgraded with the more basic wire frame filters upgraded to a pleated panel.
Having a good platform to handle the communication elements is of course very useful. But just as important is building the team ethic and making sure everyone is committed and knows their objectives. So we started the project by meeting with the shopfitters and HVAC specialists to discuss what was required and how we could all work together to deliver a great result. With the programme thoroughly reviewed and agreed by all parties, we could turn our attention to making sure a highly effective communication plan was quickly in place.
With a project as sensitive and detailed as this, you can never communicate too much. So all three parties provided updates every day on progress too allow for feedback and support. As the shopfitters and the HVAC team could actively talk to each other, the two teams built mutual trust in their skills and expertise. They could also maintain an all-important 360° view of progress, raising awareness of any potential issues later in the project and resolving them before they could develop. This proactive approach created a more flexible delivery of the first stage and ultimately saved valuable time. Units and controls were built and modified off site where possible to minimise disruption and maximise the limited time on site.
The end result was a complete installation of a new HVAC system in a live retail environment in 15 weeks from start to finish, with the showroom undertaken in normal working hours and the store and older back rooms completed out of hours. Bringing everyone together for the project continued right through to the final walkthrough of the site prior to sign-off, with both teams present to advise during the inspection.
Most importantly, the client now has a new HVAC system which performs exactly as intended and delivered quickly and efficiently with minimal impact on their business. In fact, they have been so impressed with the smooth running of the project, they are now pressing ahead with a roll-out of new HVAC systems in other locations. With yet another installation successfully completed, we look forward to providing our project expertise and highly skilled contactors to help them make the customer experience even better.
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