Rebranding - Verizon Wireless/Alltel
Retail
The Project
The acquisition of Alltel Corporation by Verizon Wireless prompted a rebranding/remodeling initiative at 75 Alltel retail sites across the south from west Texas to Florida.
The project required working with and in four separate Verizon Business Units in Dallas, Houston, Little Rock and Tampa. Each business unit had their own unique process for conducting construction or remodel projects.
The Scope of Work requirements ranged from minor cosmetic upgrades to extensive renovations of building interiors. The most complex projects had 9-week construction duration, not including the pre-construction portion of each project. Each store remained open during the project and sales were not to be impacted by the construction projects.
The QPM Solution
QPM allocated a team of Project Managers to the initiative – each allocated to a specific region. Stores were initially placed into one of three groups based on the work required:
- REFRESH: Painting, minor upgrades to IT equipment, a new sales counter, flooring and store fixtures
- C-STORE: Scope of REFRESH plus installation of additional sales fixtures, extensive remodeling of the sales area and a limited remodel of the back of the house.
- EVOLUTION: Extensive renovation of the building interior, including new sales counters, fixtures, flooring and wall treatments, installation of IT equipment, as well as the addition of new or the remodeling of existing restroom facilities.
Because the existing As-Builts were non-existent or inaccurate, there were significant adjustments to the Scope of Work at many locations. This included changing the stores from one type of rebrand to another, exposing unknown conditions and/or hazards and accelerating the pace of the projects as needed. Although changes to the scope were made, QPM had to maintain the original, construction timelines that were determined at the beginning of the project(s).
The QPM project team brought their ‘subject matter expertise’ to help establish the best, most flexible processes for completing the rebrand projects. Since four separate business units were being supported and managed, QPM provided a flexible solution to each business unit by following an already established process in some geographic areas, developing the necessary processes where none existed or revising current practices to shorten the project timeframes by over 4 weeks for the Texas market.
The QPM Project Managers were responsible for bidding, permitting, ordering of fixtures, and coordination of IT installation and completion of each project.
The Results
All stores were completed, as scheduled. Surprisingly, sales at renovated stores increased 20%, during the construction projects, even though the size of each was dramatically reduced while areas undergoing work were sectioned off.
The process and procedures developed by QPM’s embedded Project Manager was distributed to other regions for their use on these and future projects. The QPM Team provided an alternate solution to the rebranding process and was able to produce a reduced, cost savings project schedule from the process but providing the same end result.
The Regional President of Verizon Wireless recognized the Real Estate and Facilities Team with a Verizon President’s Award for the work on the Alltel Transition. QPM’s work in supporting the team was cited by team members as a key reason for the success of the project.
