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A TAS case study: St David's

Time and Motion - Speed of response proves to be essential in a major project

St David's, the new home of fashion in Wales, is one of the largest retail centres in the country and represents 39% of the total retail floor space in Cardiff - equivalent to 30 football pitches of shopping!

St David's Partnership invested £675 million to create this spectacular new retail destination which includes John Lewis, Debenhams and Marks & Spencer with around 180 further stores. The original St David's centre has also been given a £50 million cutting-edge refurbishment with state-of-the-art flooring, lighting and wall coverings. An additional mall was created as part of the renovation to link with the new development, containing 16 newly formatted units.

Martin Liddall, TAC, is the project manager at St David's shopping centre in Cardiff. He has been with the project since its inception and is no pushover when it comes to managing the many and diverse contractors which were necessary for getting the project through on time, to budget and to the high-level quality defined by the clients.

“This was a very difficult and complex project. It was challenging ensuring that the six subcontracting companies working for us, did what they were supposed to do, when it was needed.”

One of the contractors working for Martin was cabling expert, ACCL. The company had been called in to provide an essential element of the centre's security programme. Communications are increasingly important for the safe and efficient running of retail centres. ACCL had developed a communications solution which had been designed specifically with and for retail centres. Wayne Connors, MD of ACCL explains:

“TAS offers the ability for people to speak - individually or in a group - to send messages instantly and to receive and acknowledge management information - so there is a clear audit trail. With its multi-functionality and flexible options over internet protocol (meaning it is free to operate), TAS offers the centre the best possible means by which to communicate.”

Martin Liddall says of working with ACCL: “They have been excellent throughout. Their reaction times are very good and they are constantly accommodating to our requests. Not only that, but they have very often carried things out remotely from the site. This speed of response is what marks ACCL out from their competitors.

“Their preparation was meticulous. The drawing work they provided sailed through the Bovis standards process.

“All additional work required, such as refurbishment work to the shopping centre, has been carried out by ACCL with remarkable efficiency and speed. The project has come off our predicted timescales quite often but ACCL has reacted positively every time. Their response times have been excellent and we have encountered no problems in terms of missing deadlines or other time-critical issues.

“For example, our customer - Land Securities - decided on a Tuesday that they wanted to have a training session on the system on the Wednesday, the very next day. Not only did ACCL agree to this but were onsite to deliver the training session the next day themselves.

“It is not uncommon for companies to submit low estimates for work but then, as soon as the variations (extra work from the original contract specification) they load on the costs. ACCL do not do this - and we are very happy that they don't. Their pricing is fair - throughout the length of the contract.

“Ultimately, we are judged on whether our endusers (in this case, the retailers in the shopping centre) are happy or not - and they are happy.

“ACCL are different in that they tend to think out of the box in terms of their solutions provision. For example, they moved the existing system from the original St David's centre to be integrated into a new intercom system to serve both the original centre and the new centre which means that response times are significantly reduced.”

Martin Liddall is rightly proud of St David's and believes it will play its part in helping Cardiff to become a leading European retail destination. It has created attractive public spaces for people to enjoy, alongside unique and exciting stores and cafes which cater to the needs of the 21st century shopper.

Wayne Connors, ACCL MD, is also proud of the role he and his team played in bringing the project to fruition and that the high standards he sets for all ACCL's work, have been recognised by Martin Liddall on this prestigious project.

What does TAS do?

The Tenant Active System was developed to address a growing need for effective communications in major UK shopping malls. TAS delivers cost effective two-way data and voice communications between facilities management and each unit or outlet within a retail or leisure complex. Essential risk management applications such as security alerts share a platform with powerful business applications.

There are benefits for all stakeholders not least being a demonstrably safer environment. Security alerts and fast, two-way data and voice communications help towards control of crime and other threats. These are backed up by automatically generated audit trails and other business applications such as the collection of retail turnover statistics and loyalty and incentive schemes.

Benefits

• Enabling comprehensive security alerts against threats such as organised gangs, opportunistic crimes, and terrorist threats.
• Assuring a demonstrably safer environment, and reducing risk through fast communications together with automatically generated audit trails.
• Providing a platform for packaged business applications such as the collection of retail turnover statistics and loyalty and incentive schemes.
• Allowing two-way data and voice communications between centre management and tenanted units.
• Extending wireless data and voice connectivity to mobile operatives such as security guards, maintenance personnel and locally-sited police.
• Offering simple integration with other systems, leveraging legacy technology investments, suiting the system for both greenfield sites and existing centres.
• Opening the door to value added services, offering more customer choices and improving profit in the retail and leisure environment.
• Optimising valuable retail space through the use of small footprint, end-user devices with flexible mounting options.
• Gaining maximum return from essential platforms such as telephone systems, office application servers, and cabling infrastructures.

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