In his own words

Paul Riches, Project Planner, Heritage Office Furnishings, Vancouver, BC

EXTENSION: Steelcase’s SmartTools™

CHALLENGE: Re-specifying an entire proposal in less than 24 hours – including quotation, Bill of Materials and renderings

Paul Riches: We were presented with an opportunity to bid on business for a local cartage company. We were up against the usual cast of competitors but took the lead quickly through a combination of aggressive pricing and exceptional drawings – using Steelcase’s SmartTools™ Powered by CET Designer®, I did two of my “Class A” renderings for their reception area and a private office (see images), and that got us in the door in a big way. The project itself was comprised of two floors of furniture: five private offices, reception, 34 workstations and two meeting rooms.

Once we had secured the prospect’s interest, the typical wheeling and dealing began and the scope of the project began to morph – we went from EE6 suites to Currency, from Answer stations with Universal tops to Kick surfaces on Answer panels. The revisions were copious and extensive – every time there was a meeting with the client, the entire drawing would inevitably change in some manner.

After the initial quotation was released, the client came back to us immediately and requested an extensive detailed breakdown of each individual area. On top of that, there were major revisions made to the project; plus, the project manager had decided to change out a lot of the supports and power runs. Panel segmentation changed, bins changed, peds had changed … it was essentially a complete redraw of the project.

And it had to be to the client the next morning. It was 1:30 in the afternoon when this was requested.

I was also working with a salesperson who was used to completing his own manual take-offs (which also created far more work for himself). Looking at how stressed out he was while he told me of the revisions that needed to be done, I told him flat out that if he’d trust me, I could take care of the whole problem for him using CET/SmartTools.

He agreed, but in order to ensure that nothing could go “sideways” on him, he asked me to print out overall floor plans so he could manually specify the project that evening at home – again, essentially doubling up on the time and effort.

I worked on the project from 2 p.m. until 4:30 that afternoon then had to leave for another appointment. The next morning I came in early, around 7 a.m., and worked on it again until 8:30 a.m., at which point I had completely redrawn the plans, generated overall 3D drawing of the entire floor plates, 3Ds of the individual areas, Class “A” renderings of the two areas that I had done previously and a complete and accurate Bill of Materials that had been tagged, sectioned off by individual area number, and had the pricing discounts applied.

I had done all of this in less than five hours.

My salesperson came to me at around 8:30 a.m. that morning and told me not to worry about it, that he was almost finished specifying manually, and that I’d be wasting my time. I kindly told him that he was actually the one who’d wasted his time since I was minutes away from being finished with the new quotation.

By contrast, my salesperson had worked from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. that night, gone home, worked from 8 p.m. to about 2 a.m., then came back to the office where he and his project manager worked on the specs from about 6:30 a.m. until 9 a.m. That’s approximately 15 hours between two people to do what one person did in about four-and-a-half hours – and their work only included the specifications and the quotation, not the drawings.

So that’s 10 hours of extra work that they could have saved using SmartTools™ Powered by CET Designer® – I’ve kept the Bill of Materials on the corner of my desk and now wave it at our salespeople when they hem and haw about not knowing if CET/SmartTools is effective. As far as I’m concerned, I can’t come up with a more compelling example of how I can save time, immeasurable effort and money.