Workplace optimization software can transform your capital real estate projects from lengthy and disjointed, to efficient and streamlined. By leveraging quantitative and qualitative data, tracking costs in real-time, and engaging effectively with stakeholders, you can count on an optimized space that yields a favorable ROI.
Real estate is one of a company’s largest expenditures. So, it’s no surprise that many are looking to prioritize workplace efficiencies as more and more orgs are embracing hybrid work models.
You may decide to do more with less or optimize your current space. Either way, workplace teams, department heads, and the C-suite need to feel confident that they’re making data-driven decisions that will yield a beneficial ROI, whether that’s consolidating or expanding their real estate portfolio.
After all, capital projects are significant endeavors with lots of moving parts. Even if you take an incremental approach, you still need multiple reliable data sources, effective stakeholder collaboration, and real-time information to make your project a success.
Using an integrated workplace optimization software can help streamline the planning, strategy, and design phases, all of which have a strong business impact. For instance, the integrated Saltmine platform empowers workplace teams with enhanced insights during the pre-design stages, streamlines communication among stakeholders, and facilitates confident decision-making upfront. This not only saves time but also minimizes the occurrence of costly change orders in later phases.
The current capital projects process for CRE is disjointed and disconnected. Let’s make it more collaborative and data-driven for a project that’s on budget, on time, and on spec.
Here are three ways to solve some common issues with the capital project process with workplace optimization software:
1. Keep track of all your workplace data in one place
Data should be at the core of all your workplace decisions.
But here’s the rub: it’s often scattered and all over the place. Facilities might have occupancy data, the workplace experience team might have employee survey results, and the real estate team might have your workplace guidelines, which may or may not be up to date.
The status quo can only offer fragmented, atomistic perspectives of workplace data, which leads to a suboptimal and disunite process for moving capital projects forward.
Without quality, consolidated workplace data that your stakeholders can trust and access at any point, it’ll be difficult for anyone to proceed confidently.
With all the pressure workplace teams are under, every hour counts. By leveraging the right workplace optimization software, teams can save precious hours chasing spreadsheets, guidelines, and design files, and pool everything in one place. Unifying all these disjointed data sources, ensures they’re accurate and up to date, providing workplace teams with meaningful insights.
Saltmine is a centralized, data source-agnostic platform that ingests all your traditionally siloed data points to give you a holistic overview of your workplace. That includes everything from utilization data and meeting room bookings, to sentiment data from your employee surveys. The software also provides a repository for your workplace guidelines, program ratios, and metrics.
When it comes to making decisions, you don’t even need to come to your own conclusions. Saltmine can run analyses to give you unbiased, AI-driven insights and recommendations for the next steps. After all, information without action is nothing. By using this intelligence to inform tasks like test fitting and scenario planning, you’re automatically set up for success.
2. Collaborate seamlessly for effective stakeholder engagement
Stakeholder collaboration is traditionally fragmented and synchronous, with no central overview of the project progress and feedback collection. That means that once another round of changes has been made, one stakeholder might pipe up with an additional requirement that the latest revision no longer adheres to. You’ll often find yourself chasing your tail while stakeholders feel they haven’t been communicated or engaged with effectively.
Since it’s inherently inefficient, this can drag out your project, putting you behind schedule and forking out more budget for more of the designer’s time than you need. Plus, not everyone speaks “design” language, meaning you’d probably need a designer or architect present to communicate the proposals.
With Saltmine, you can bring all stakeholders (internal and external) to the platform and collect asynchronous feedback in one place. Everyone from workplace executives to the CFO will be notified of the latest updates and see changes immediately.
Want the Head of Workplace to sign off on a block or review a test fit? Simply tag them in a comment like you would in a Google Doc and ask for their approval. Since updates to the design are instantaneous, you can also make their amends on the spot while you’re in a design review meeting, reducing the time needed to gather everyone together.
Unlike 2D layouts, you don’t need a background in design to imagine what the project might look like. Any stakeholder can visualize your test fit with immersive 3D walkthroughs, and since the proposals are grounded in quality data, getting decision-makers on board is easier.
3. Track costs in real-time and avoid going over budget
You’ve probably experienced spending more time, money, and effort than was necessary on a capital project, only to discover that it hasn’t met your objectives.
This could be attributed to costs slipping mid-project due to insufficient pricing awareness, or to delays and do-overs escalating expenses.
Just a small reduction in change orders can save millions of dollars. Since programming is faster and more accurate with Saltmine, and all your ratios, metrics, and budget are programmed in, there’s less room for error. And having all your stakeholders together in one place means fewer misunderstandings.
You can also monitor spending throughout all phases with Saltmine’s real-time Bill of Materials (BOM), so you can stay on budget as you plan your scenarios. With live information at your fingertips and transparency for all stakeholders, your project will be in the best possible shape before the construction.
Having as much information and cohesion earlier in the process is more likely to yield the desired result in the real world. For example, with Saltmine, you’ll be confident that your test fit will actually work in the built environment.
Workplace optimization software is your ally for more efficient capital projects
The significance of utilizing technology for workplace optimization primarily stems from improved scalability and efficiency. As the nature of CRE is getting more and more complex, and the scattered data noise is getting increasingly louder, workplace professionals are struggling to make sense of it all and fully grasp the breadth of all the data.
That’s why a workplace optimization software is the solution. Saltmine empowers workplace teams to fully comprehend all their data, reduce the “noise,” and centralize all real estate assets under one roof.
The platform ensures projects adhere to guidelines and budgets, streamlines approvals, make seamless and transparent changes, and reduces do-overs. And your stakeholders will be with you every step of the way, knowing that your proposals are grounded in quality data and insights.
That way, you can proceed with confidence as you increase the efficiency of your real estate portfolio.
For more on overcoming the hurdles of capital projects with Saltmine, take a look at this fact sheet on capital projects.
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