Road warriors: Aramark brings design company to its clients

Nation's Restaurant News, Nov 18, 1996

PHILADELPHIA - Aramark has taken its design show on the road to increase the speed and decrease the cost of construction and renovation projects.

The foodservice contractor, one of the few companies that do their own design work, has made its computer-aided design program mobile. Aramark calls its in-the-field service CAD Light.

Orlando Espinosa, vice president of administration for Aramark's Interactive Design Group, said the result has been projects that are being completed in record time and clients who are increasingly satisfied with the finished product.

"Clients always want a job done faster," Espinosa said. "The only way we can do that is to bring our work directly to the client. The client has more input into the project, we can communicate changes to him more articulately and we can get approval on designs and changes more quickly."

Using laptops, projectors and special software programs, IDG members can go on-site and discuss projects with clients, make rough changes on drawings to show the client how they would appear and transmit change orders to the CAD department in Philadelphia instantly.

Final drawings still have to be generated in Philadelphia, Espinosa noted. However, the time taken to do those renderings has been reduced dramatically.

"Even with CAD, it used to be that we would have to send a drawing to a client overnight," he explained. "The client would have to sit down and review the plans, suggest changes and then overnight them back to us. We would then make the changes and resend the plans for the client to approve the change. That would take days or weeks."

As an example, director of design Deb Wicks related her recent experience at the Universidad De Las Americas in Mexico City, where Aramark is building four food courts and a service center for the university's new student union.

"Bringing our CAD capabilities into the field, we were able to accomplish six weeks of work in one week," she said.

In addition, Wicks added, CAD Light gives IDG staff the opportunity to demonstrate ideas more clearly.

"Using the laptop computers, we can take an aspect of a design and elevate it or rotate it, giving the clients a perspective that you can't get on flat drawings," Wicks said.

Although CAD Light, like the IDG department itself, gives Aramark another selling point when it is bidding on new accounts, IDG is available only to Aramark clients. The company does no outside consulting.

CAD Light is the latest change in a department that began nearly 40 years ago as the Facilities Department. It was a typical engineering department, Espinosa said, with as many as 62 engineers, architects and draftsmen on staff.

Nine years ago we had 42 people in the department, still doing everything by hand," he added.

Since the introduction of CAD five years ago, the department has shrunk to 30 full-time staff and eight outside consultants.

The next level for IDG, Wicks said, will be widespread use of three-dimensional drawings on computer and "virtual design," where clients can "walk through" a new or redesigned facility and make changes immediately, from the placement of equipment to the color of the tile on the servery walls.

IDG also is getting ready to restructure the department into five self-directed work teams: administrative support, technical services, interior design and two food facilities design teams.

Each team win contain specialists in various design aspects, led by a project leader.

"The idea is to apply our greatest resources to any given project," Espinosa said. "Everyone will bring different strengths to the project, and we think we can improve our efficiency tenfold - without upgrading our technology."

At the same time, he added, the work teams will "develop systems and procedures, nurture leadership and management skills, and promote a workplace where individual and team performance is recognized and rewarded."