CASE STUDY | PROJECT DELIVERY | RELOCATION
The Australian arm of a global technology company embarked on a significant transformation of its capital assets, working with Quay Consulting to deliver three sizable and challenging relocations of IT, staff and fitouts.
Key Deliverables
- Successful, long-standing client relationship and role as a trusted advisor
- Successful delivery of three sizable and challenging relocations of IT, staff, and fitouts
- High-level, high-value change management and project management capability
- Robust governance and assurance throughout the relocation projects.
As one of Australia’s leading business solutions providers of document, knowledge, and systems solutions, our client supports Australian businesses to work smarter and streamline business processes.
Quay was initially engaged in 2012 to support a relocation program for a 50,000m2 supplies distribution centre fitout, our focus was to support information systems migration for its 3PL project.
The success of this project set up a long-standing relationship that has seen Quay deliver multiple relocation projects for the Client, delivering a transformation program that has included the outsourcing of all logistics operations 4PL, a head office relocation, and two state sales office moves.
Quay was responsible for delivering all three core relocations projects.
The Programs
Project 1 – Transformation Program
The Client had completed a transformation program which included outsourcing all of its Logistics operations 4PL and was scheduled to coincide with end-of-life dates to avoid duplicating overheads. In addition, leading-edge technology and activity-based working concepts were to be implemented in all new office fitouts.
Quay led the relocations and technical project management and was responsible for gathering the business requirements that had to be communicated to architectural and engineering consultants.
Quay managed all of the workstreams, vendors and contractors, with two further relocations completed into an additional location in 2018/19 bringing the total space occupied to 10,000m2.
Project 2 – Head Office
The Client’s head office building site was re-zoned as residential in 2015. Their landlord bought out the remaining lease and hired a contractor to build a new purpose-built head office This was an$11m fitout project which involved closing two additional Sydney sites and relocating 700 staff twice. The client was invoking its sustainability strategy as part of the project, reusing the existing workstations from the old head office.
Throughout the two-year construction project, Quay worked closely with the base building main contractor, engineers and architects to ensure it understood and met the business requirements for the project.
Within this project, the biggest challenge was a delay in the handover of the base building to the fitout contractor due to poor weather delaying a new road and the unexpected consequence was a reduced window of eight weeks to move both the technology and the staff.
The project was completed on schedule with minimal disruption to the business and its customer service team, as all services were commissioned and tested as each floor was handed over.
As Quay had already rolled out ABW at the first project site, we were able to build on the successes and learnings, including:
- Adding more collaboration areas,
- Video conferencing infrastructure and the deployment of Cisco 1GB access points to support wireless-only areas, which comprised 80% of the total office space.
- All desktops were replaced with laptops and softphones were rolled out before migrating to the new site.
- In addition, Quay rolled out auto reception sign-in for visitors, customers and contractors.
The fitout specification had to meet ISMS ISO 9000 and it passed the Certification Audit in 2018, however, the project required a lot of additional planning and coordination to meet the certification standards.
Auditoriums incorporated a meet and greet space adjacent to the training rooms in the new head office, with the use of operable walls we created a space for “town hall’ style events that could support up to 300 staff.
The program achieved its objectives of outsourcing all non-core activities and substantially reducing the national property footprint and costs.
State Sales Office
In 2016, the decision was made to move the NSW state Sales team from head office to the Sydney CBD, a high specification fitout of 1400m2 costing $3.4m. The project was completed on schedule with smart glass being used throughout the fitout to allow for total visibility or privacy when required.
Quay extended the head office network with a 100mb dedicated fibre link back to the distribution centre to provide seamless connectivity for the Sales team.
Canberra State Sales Office
Quay was engaged to deliver a $2.5 million combined logistics outsourcing, new CBD office, and showroom fitout project in Canberra, which required a Government Security L4 office and information systems specification to facilitate special government project work.
The three projects incorporated new leases and Quay was responsible for requirements gathering and developing the plans to be signed-off by the Client’s project sponsor prior to tenders being issued. This included:
- Preparing preliminary budgets and managing the internal capital approval process.
- Ensuring that carrier services were procured in a timely fashion
- Design and fitout of the Comms rooms and the IS cabling and wireless infrastructure.
- Procurement and provisioning of all-new IS infrastructure and equipment and relocation of existing equipment, as part of the staff relocation process. i.e. routers, switches, racks, access points, monitors, docking stations etc.
- Designing and procuring the audio-visual and video conferencing infrastructure for the training and meeting rooms in the new facilities
- Project managing the architect and interior designers to ensure Wayfinding and signage meet the business requirements
- Management of the implementation of an Auto Reception and Login system for Guests, Visitors and Contractors. This system automatically sent an email and text message to the person the guest or customer was meeting.
- Gathering all the requirements for Emergency and UPS backup systems, and ensuring they were installed, tested and signed off by the electrical engineers.
- Project managing the access control and CCTV installation and testing.
- Follow-me printing is standard for all facilities.
Outcomes
- Successful, long-standing client relationship and role as a trusted advisor
- Successful delivery of three sizable and challenging relocations of IT, staff, and fitouts
- High-level, high-value change management and project management capability
- Robust governance and assurance throughout the relocation projects.
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