The Industrial Building  Solution  ADD VALUE , SAVE MONEY

I was employed by a large hospitality industry cooperative to assist them with finding the best solution for the location and construction of their new office and warehouse.

They had received numerous submissions for the sale of land, from builders to build the new building and from developers offering to do both. Despite putting together a reasonable brief on their requirements every offer they received provided different information which they were not skilled at analysing for their $20m plus investment.

They had also been through a similar process 7 years before and their old building had numerous faults which they did not want to repeat. They wanted to double the size of the existing building and get a top quality product.

We narrowed the submission back to 4 possible solutions, rewrote the brief in more detail and then interviewed each of the 4 possible contenders. From this process we narrowed the field back to 2 possible and finally selected the best option from those 2 contenders.

Yes this is a normal process of selecting a preferred option however what we did in the process was to refine their brief in ways which added value to their building for the long term.

1. We arrived at a building layout solution which reduced their land requirement from 16,000 m2 down to 13,200 m2 saving around $800,000

2. We lifted the height of the building by 700 mm ( about 2 feet) which enabled them to put an extra layer of pallet storage over the 15,000m2 warehouse. the cost of this extra height was $170,000 and yet it increased the number of pallets which could be stored by 25% ( 5 levels instead of 4)

3. We listed to their concerns about the faults in their previous building and carried a number of cost benefit analysis checks on some construction options. For them the most important part of the operation of the warehouse was that it should be flat with very few joints in the concrete. We chose a post- tensioned concrete floor system which had only one long joint in each direction compared with joints every 10 m in a normal warehouse. the solution was slightly more expensive ( about 10% of the concrete floor cost) however in the long term their forklifts could move around the warehouse more quickly and with less bumping at joints and the construction process was quicker.

Now not everyone is working with buildings this big, however the process is much the same even for small home extensions, additions or improvements. It is taking the time to sort out the details before you start – The Renovation Plan -  which makes the big difference in the ultimate cost and satisfaction any client will get from carrying out a building or construction process