Karen Barton: CET Designer with the SmartTools Extension on the Cayman Islands project

Read our grand prize winner, Karen Barton’s, own words of how she managed to design a three-floors building using CET Designer with the SmartTools Extension.

This customer is in the Cayman Islands, which posed quite a few challenges to us. Challenges that we were able to overcome due to the capabilities of CET SmartTools.

We received block drawing layouts of 3 floors from the design firm that is located in the islands. These drawings showed the locations of 197 Steelcase Answer stations, 2 different set-ups. 63 Steelcase Elective Elements Offices, 3 different set-ups. Conference rooms, break rooms and lobbies.

Our main challenge was not being able to have face to face conversations with the design firm and the customer. We overcame this with the rendering capabilities of CET SmartTools. It was of huge importance that we were able to convey to the customer the furniture we were proposing. We were able to send realistic drawings of the different type stations and offices so that the design firm and customer could approve or disapprove and suggest changes. We were able to make the changes in a timely fashion and re-submit for approval. This allowed everybody involved to know exactly what we were specifying with no surprises.

Another challenge was staging the shipping from our office. The furniture had to be containerized and shipped to the Cayman Islands. We had to load the containers per the install schedule. Thanks to Part Tagging we were able to have accurate quantities of parts coming out of the shipping crates and onto the floors as they would be installed.

The third challenge was that it was non-Steelcase installers that were putting the furniture together. Being able to supply them detailed drawings and renderings of what the different set-ups were to look like enabled them to install the furniture in a timely fashion.

The furniture is now installed, complete as of 08-28-09. The feedback from the design firm and the customer has been very positive. The most often heard comment was that everything looked exactly like the renderings that were provided.