 |
 |
THE BOTTOM LINE
Wise
Move Management Reduces Down
Time and Costs
By Liese Hutchison
Business
is booming and employees are stacked on top of each other because
of the growth. There are two alternatives: expand in the existing
location or move to a new facility. Most companies dread the
thought of moving, because the process can be disruptive, resulting
in lost and broken items, frustrated employees, down time and
missed customer opportunities. In response to businesses' trepidation
about moving, a relatively new field--move management--has emerged
to reduce move-related headaches and lower moving expenses.
The
field of move management has grown, because most companies don't
move often enough to have a full-time staff person responsible
for a move. According to Lisa Bell-Reim, president of Oculus,
Inc., an architecture and interior design firm that offers move
management services to its clients, the person responsible for
handling a company's move is typically the office manager or
the facilities manager. "Moving is expensive if you have an
in-house person coordinating--he ends up spending 90 percent
of his time planning the move and not doing his regular job,"
she notes.
Move
managers become one-stop vendors for their clients, handling furniture
installers, movers, contractors, and telephone and computer network
professionals. "Move management is logistics planning. We talk
to our clients to help them access the vendors required in a move,"
Bell-Reim says. Oculus reviews bids, coordinates the timeline
and smooths
out the wrinkles. "We plan on how to phase in the move by identifying who needs to move first, middle and last."
She
states that a move can be more expensive if it isn't coordinated
properly. "For
example if you have computer professionals who are hired to
disassemble the computers then re-hook them in the new location
and the computers don't arrive on time, you lose man-hours," Bell-Reim
explains. "All the up-front planning is worth it, because
once you're in the middle of a move, you don't want surprises."
Because
companies don't want too much down time, moves often are
scheduled on the weekend to make sure everything is ready
to go when work starts on Monday. Bell-Reim recalls a move
Oculus facilitated for Southwestern Bell. The 700 employees
were supposed to be moved into a new facility over 12 weekends.
In this case however, even with the best laid plans, construction
delays narrowed the move window.
Realizing
the move time was shrinking and the costs were increasing
because of the weekend and overtime involved, along with
the threat of penalties for not moving on time, Oculus went
to Plan B--sell the furniture in Southwestern Bell's current
inventory and buy new furniture that would be delivered
to the site without the expense of moving. The cost of the
new furniture, after factoring in the money saved from the
lack of overtime, the money from the sale of the old furniture
and not incurring late moving penalties, cost Southwestern
Bell roughly the same amount of money as if it had kept
the old furniture and moved it.
"The result was that Southwestern Bell bought newer, more
efficient furniture for roughly the same cost as moving the
old," Bell-Reim notes. "A side benefit was that the employees
were happier, because they were getting new furniture."
|
This article
was written by Liese L. Hutchison, assistant professor in the
department of communication at Saint Louis University and a free-lance
writer.
|
|
|
|
|
-
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
-
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
-
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
-
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
|
