Is it critical to remain operational during the renovation and expansion of your existing facility, or will production shift to another one of your facilities? If your production needs to remain operational then at what capacity?

These are just a couple of the many questions that our team openly discusses with manufacturing clients at the start of a capital investment project. We understand that remaining operational may be paramount to business success and future growth. As such we will work together to develop a customized phasing strategy to achieve this goal. To begin the project, we will walk the facility with the client to get an understanding of the current production process and map out the existing flow and future flow that is desired for the project. Our engineers will also review the existing mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and structural infrastructure systems which are key aspects to consider as we analyze and review phasing options, solutions, and potential cost implications.

Phased approaches consist of a variety of strategies based on the client’s business model, the existing facility layout, the site dynamics for future expansion, the age of the building systems, the physical location of the business, and other key components. Given our understanding of process, workflow, building infrastructure, and spatial requirements, we are able to work together with a client to develop quick conceptual solutions that visualize the final desired outcome. Then, we take the final solution and the current state of the facility and develop a logical phasing
strategy which may consist of two, three, or even multiple phases of expansion and renovation.

For a large-scale industrial client, we were able to develop a two-phase expansion and renovation project which then allowed for multiple sub-phases to occur inside the facility over a broader time horizon. The first phase was the expansion of the production space which was an extension of the building enclosure and the addition of a new production entry and common gathering space. This allowed for the creation of some ‘flex-space’ within the production side to then be able to expand the office and research and development spaces.

For a smaller-scale manufacturing client, we added a 40,000 SF addition to expand and relocate the assembly area and then remap the flow of inbound and outbound product to the facility. This allowed for the repositioning of the quality control space and the expansion of the staff area for the increased jobs that were created at the company.