Stay In Place Renovation: A Survival Guide

For a year our marketing team has been working on updating our collateral to reflect the refresh of our brand promise launched in February 2017. From responding to RFP’s to coordinating project photoshoots, we thought we had a good understanding of who we are, but it took living through a renovation in place to truly appreciate what makes what we do extraordinary.

3+ years of planning, dozens of design iterations of our experience center floor plan, and countless opinions led to an optimal floor plan that supports how we work today, while future-proofing our space for inevitable change. When the time finally came to clear the space to be renovated, we ultimately found ourselves in a busy time supporting our clients.

Without missing a beat, our Operations and IT teams worked systematically to convert three meeting rooms into swing space to accommodate 40 temporary workstations. According to schedule, 10 new workstations, in conjunction with the reconfiguration of 8 others, were relocated and installed on another floor. Within two days of coordinated effort, our team had settled everyone into their fully-functioning, temporary workstations.

As the project progressed, our Operations team dismantled and staged 55 workstations, 5 meeting/collaboration spaces and in excess of 150 linear feet of demountable partitions. The team simultaneously completed the tagging, packaging, and storing of 22 workstations, demountable partitions, and ancillary items for future use. Most importantly, this was completed without a single disruption to our clients’ projects.

According to Rob Culvert, Vice President of Operations, the secret is having the right team onboard. “With years of experience, our team knows that having and communicating a plan is key. Understanding the products we are installing and how to set clear expectations with everyone involved is a priority from the start. This is a great opportunity for our Operations team to directly engage with the rest of our organization. We see it as a learning opportunity to help us further improve our customer experience.”

Here are the Survival Tips we can share:

1. Planning is key. Have the right team working on the planning of the move so the important details do not get overlooked.
2. Trust the experts to deliver. Our experienced teams knew exactly how to stage and execute the moves, as well as how to dismantle and store of items to make future phases even easier to accomplish.
3. There’s no such thing as over communication. Let your people know what to expect, when and for how long. Teamwork and buy-in by everyone ensures the transition is as easy as possible.
4. Laugh with each other when times get tough! Moving can be a stressful time as few people enjoy change. Laughing through it helped us become even more excited for beautiful new space!

“Our new space fully integrates architecture, furniture, and technology solutions and is a testament to our logistics team. It will propel us into the future and be a great space to inspire and help us co-create meaningful spaces with our clients.” says by Kevin Klier, Senior Vice President & General Manager.

We look forward to revealing the new dancker experience center at our open house celebration on October 26th.