Providing Consistent “DPR-Quality” Service and Results Nationwide

With the U.S. leading the world as the largest and healthiest construction market, DPR continues to drive the advancement of the commercial building industry through fresh approaches, increased collaboration, improved systems and steadfast service.

With the U.S. leading the world as the largest and healthiest construction market, DPR continues to drive the advancement of the commercial building industry through fresh approaches, increased collaboration, improved systems and steadfast service.

The role of DPR has expanded beyond that of a traditional builder.

According to Scott Reay of DPR, in addition to building and construction management skills, the company is being asked by its customers to provide sound “business intelligence” that adds value to the overall development process.

As DPR moves into its second decade of “building great things,” the company takes a fresh look at its approach for meeting customers’ needs in multiple cities across the country. Utilizing technology, cultivating talent, encouraging leadership at every level, and creating new techniques, DPR continues to reinvent the collaborative design and delivery process on a national scale.

“We’ve learned a lot over the last 10 years, especially about our customers and how their needs vary from region to region, what is critical to their business success, how different services are required in different markets,” said Reay. DPR’s roster of repeat national customers includes such companies as WorldCom, Motorola, Sun Microsystems, Kaiser Permanente, Charles Schwab and Level 3 Communications.

“We’re building upon a foundation of business knowledge we’ve accumulated from working with world-class companies to further improve the mechanisms we have in place and offer better customer-centric service,” added Reay.

For example, DPR evaluates facility costs differently based on the type of customer and the market in which it conducts business. In some cases, facility costs represent a significant component of a customer’s annual product cost. As a result, the process for designing and constructing a facility must be made flexible in order to respond to ever-changing economic shifts. In other cases, facilities represent only a fraction of the customer’s annual product cost; however, the design, layout and operation of its facilities impact the rate at which the customer generates revenue.

“A variety of factors come into play when designing and constructing a facility,” said Greg Hulbert, director of business development for DPR in San Francisco. “Most of our customers now expect our teams to have a greater knowledge of their business practices to accompany our building skills, so that we’re able to enhance our services and provide value-added assistance for all of their real estate planning needs across the country.”

Redefining Standards

“Our culture is one where every person at every level is positioned to interact with our customers,” said Reay. “This non-hierarchical corporate structure fosters an environment for learning as much about our customers and their businesses as we possibly can.”

Through the knowledge gathered, DPR is creating a central business intelligence center to serve as a resource of information for the company’s network of regional offices. “Real estate development needs may vary from customer to customer or city to city, but there are also a great number of fundamentals about the delivery model that do not change,” said Hulbert. “We want to expand our efforts, transfer the lessons we’ve learned from region to region, and use them to achieve better results for our customers.

By taking a larger national view of our resources, combined with our regional experience and business expertise, we’re out to set new industry standards in the delivery of projects.”

DPR’s new delivery model will help to:

• Improve speed to market through advanced planning
• Provide additional savings through overall procurement strategies
• Assure consistent reliable service
• Eliminate “surprises” by uncovering exposures and risks sooner
• Implement smoother project execution and delivery through shared services
• DPR is also promoting online communications by creating and maintaining customer-specific, central databases for activities like billing, budgets, contracts, meeting minutes, procurement, and corporate standards that all offices and the various project teams draw upon to share ideas and resources.

“One of our main objectives is to increase communication internally so that our regional project teams know how to work with our national customers and understand the way they like to receive information,” said Hulbert. “We also anticipate that increased communication will allow us to better utilize the people power we have available to meet increased customer demands.”

Customers Have It Their Way

Drawing upon a fast-food slogan, Hulbert said, “special orders, especially for repeat customers, will be much easier to handle, because DPR will have at its disposal the information and resources necessary to respond quickly to needs in a variety of locations.”

An example is the work DPR continues to perform for WorldCom. With multiple projects underway simultaneously for the telecommunications giant, DPR created a book of WorldCom procedures, as well as an online collaboration area, giving teams across the country access to standard information, along with an arena for sharing knowledge and asking questions. This has minimized the need for the national WorldCom representative to field questions from all of the different project teams.

It also allows for the sharing of resources and materials that can result in both time and money savings for the customer. For instance, telecom projects are notorious for their aggressive construction schedules; however, these types of facilities also require a special flooring that often needs to be ordered well in advance. In one case, the flooring was unavailable within the scheduled timeframe, which could have created a delay. Through the customer-specific database, the project team learned that another project had the flooring but did not need it for another six months. Therefore, a trade was made, allowing DPR to move along on the project as scheduled. Any unused materials from one job are also often transferred to another, resulting in additional savings.

“We are always looking at ways to approach the next project better,” said Reay. “As DPR matures from a 10-year-old company with national capabilities to a global enterprise, we must continue to move ever forward to provide the highest quality of service. We must also maintain a creative and flexible environment, where all ideas are encouraged and welcomed—the characteristics that have helped us evolve from a start-up in the 1990s to a growing visionary business.”