Construction In Retail Industry

Before joining Prince Retail, I was connected to a construction firm specializing in heavy industrial with projects in power plants, refineries, mining and the likes. I was a fresh graduate engineer by then when I joined the company. I rose from rank from a site engineer to a planning engineer then promoted as fabrication superintendent then as a team lead in steel detailing works using Tekla.

I gained a lot of experience in the 15 years that I worked for that company. With different and unique projects every year, it molded me to be resilient to change. As they say, the only permanent thing in life is change; I believe adapting to change made me a better professional compared to when I joined that company.

My 15 years working on different projects in different industries in an ISO-certified company helped me prepare for my role when I joined Prince Retail. Joining the retail industry was totally new to me. Allow to me share with you what construction in the construction in the retail industry.

Speed is the Name of the Game

The Retail industry is a fast paced environment. You need to be ahead of your competitors for you to be competitive in the business. Prince Retail is a chain of hypermarts (a mix of supermarkets, department stores and general merchandise) all over the Philippines. Our store is a warehouse-type building with a mezzanine with an average construction floor area of 3,000 sqm.

When I joined Prince Retail, our stores are usually constructed in 12 months on average. Since in retail, speed is the name of the game, I look for ways how to compress the construction schedule. Then I changed our construction methodology by using Pre Engineered Building. It is a steel building designed to maximize the work at the factory and minimize the work on site.

I was able to compress the construction schedule as soon as the civil works started on site, the fabrication works of the steel structure also commenced in the factory. So when civil works or the foundation of the steel structure is completed, the steel structure is also planned and scheduled to arrive on site. Assembling the steel on site is just assembling Lego blocks making the work on site efficient. Indeed, from 12-month construction period I managed to compress it into 6-month construction period.

Lower Capex is a Key

In the retail industry, a lower CAPEX for your stores is already an advantage. So to manage the cost of the building, I needed to review the design to make it cost efficient. Our stores are already naturally ventilated when I joined Prince Retail. It makes it cost efficient and environmentally friendly since we are not using air conditioners. Instead, we designed our building with the basic principle of air, “hot air goes up, cold air stays down”.

Using steel instead of concrete for the structure also helps us reduce costs. In the Philippines wherein the climate is hot, we needed to use cost efficient materials for our roof and wall in order to insulate our building from the heat.

I needed to also to change how we construct our building in terms of manpower in order to save cost. So overall, I managed to lower down the CAPEX cost of our buildings to a significant amount.

Compressing the construction schedule to lower down the construction cost is not an easy thing.

What is Next?

We have already achieved compressing the schedule and cost in Prince Retail, but it does not stop there. We are still looking for ways on how to improve it further. I need to ensure that I will be updated on the current trends in construction by attending construction exhibits outside the Philippines. Getting information from Construction Business Review also helps me being updated on the current trends.

Innovations that I learned from exhibits and magazines need to be studied first before being implemented. Making cost comparisons is very essential for us before we can implement. So with cost comparison that I mentioned means doing due diligence on the supplier, talking to different businesses who have already tried that technology and getting all the needed costs for us to see the whole picture.

I find it exciting to see competitors in Pre Engineered Building industry. In South East Asia, this is dominated by suppliers from Vietnam. I find it exciting seeing Pre Engineered Building industry in China improving. With this, the competition will benefit us end users in terms of cost and quality. I am also hoping Vietnam can produce its own steel plates so their cost would be lower. My wishful thinking is that some company in Vietnam or China will put a Pre Engineered Building factory here in the Philippines.