Carpet for corporate needs

Building Operating Management, Sep 2001 by Hunt, Richard

Buying good carpet is the first step, but it has to be maintained in a quality program to ensure appearance and long life.

Although there are many nitty-gritty details in the corporate policy, other factors also came into play. For example, it was important to partner with a quality company that shared our company's philosophy and values. What's more, we concluded that it was vital to train staff on our holistic philosophy. The staff needed to understand the philosophy to buy into the program and ensure its success.

The carpet policy produced several important benefits. For one thing, we are able to maximize our investment by maintaining carpet as an asset; so far, we haven't thrown away product after relocation. What's more, we can be flexible in our space use and real estate plans. Equally important, the carpet looks good all the time. Finally, we are not disposing of carpet in a landfill before that's necessary; in fact, we expect to get 15 to 20 years or more out of our carpet. Another environmental benefit is that the installation and cleaning processes we have specified improve our indoor air quality compared to traditional methods.

Lessons Learned

One key lesson of this initiative is that service led sales. We deliberately chose products based on a relationship with a supplier that could provide service as well as sell product. Fortunately, we had a partner that could do both. Service is the key differentiator in carpet today.

Some changes have been made in the program. For example, we initially designed the program with the field carpet design standards in mind and did not incorporate specified "higher end" space for customer contact areas. We have since expanded the program to include designs for this type of space.

There are tradeoffs to be made in developing a carpet policy. For example, when we chose the product, we were a little frustrated by the choices available. In the last two years, we have seen patterns that we prefer. But at a certain point we had to choose and stick with a standard.

It's important to take the long-term view of a carpet policy. The program can't work if it isn't sold internally with the long-- term financial and performance issues clearly defined. To make the program work for the long-term, it's crucial to make a good choice for supplier, product and maintenance provider. This relationship must last for the life of the product.

We have reapplied more than 100,000 square feet of this product in the past 18 months as we have changed space due to business requirements; this is a validation of the success of the program. We have also been able to reapply and redirect inventory to priority projects. Because we have a ready supply of product available, we have been able to divert product to a higher priority project when the need occurred.

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