Partner, Emyr Parry, and the HBPW team received a personal thank you card from baby brand, Kiddicare, after saving the UK retailer money with an exercise in value engineering.
Supermarket chain Wm Morrisons, parent company to Kiddicare, bought up a number of Best Buy sites when the UK arm of the American-owned electronics company collapsed in early 2012.
They then set about re-fitting them so that they could accommodate the baby retailer and, as part of the UK wide project, called on HBPW’s sister company, HB Projects, to assist them with four outlets, including the 40,000 square foot superstore at Cribbs Causeway in Bristol and another at Hayes in Middlesex.
Emyr said: “After completing two of the stores, using existing engineering drawings, HB Projects got permission from Kiddicare to work with us on the remaining two, feeling that we could make a difference to the budget. Kiddicare asked us to illustrate what value engineering savings we could make when compared with the original engineering plans, which we managed to do, and I am delighted that our work went down so well that it prompted a special congratulatory card from one of the project managers.”
HBPW has worked with HB Projects many times previously and designed the secondary structures that now support furniture fittings and internal walls at the Kiddicare outlets. “It just goes to show,” added Emyr, “that when you work closely with a construction partner you each begin to understand, over time, how the other works and invariably this benefits the client as it did with Kiddicare.!
