Finding suitable warehouse facilities can be a real challenge that our consultants are able to undertake for you. The growth of online retail, along with limited land availability for industrial development, has precipitated a 70% decline in warehouse facility availability between 2009 and 2017.
Most major land agents are forecasting that limitations in availability are set to continue as land available for development is increasingly allocated to higher value residential or commercial retail development.
With limitations on warehouse facility availability, there is an increasing need for flexibility and agility in identifying and securing suitable properties. A blueprint of the size and type of facility must be established before approaching the market, but this blueprint should be flexible so as not to narrow the number of suitable properties. For example, you may need to consider trading floor space for eaves height, or the potential for installing mezzanine floors. Also, especially for older warehouse stock under 100,000 sq ft, dock-level access is relatively uncommon and alternative ‘faux level doors’ or scissor lifts may need to be considered.
Our consultants can provide clients with a full-service offering; from designing the size and configuration of warehouse required, through to searching, identifying and assessing operational cost impacts against suitable warehouse facilities on the market. Furthermore, once a suitable property has been located and agreed, our warehouse consultants can project manage the conveyancing and contract agreement process, oversee the fit-out and manage all the implementation requirements until the site is fully operational.
Critical to identifying suitable warehouse facilities is having a clear understanding of the warehouse size and configuration requirements. Our warehouse consultants are able to develop a blueprint plan with full CAD schematics of the ideal requirement, specifying size, layout, storage space, operating space and height requirements. Further to this, our warehouse consultants can build a dynamic model of the requirement so the impact of different warehouse facilities on the market can be tested i.e. how will a reduction in eaves height effect the total space requirement, or how will only having level access doors impact throughput rates and operating costs?
You can read more our warehouse design services in our warehouse design consultancy section.
Unless a warehouse facility is being built specific to a company’s requirements, it is highly probable that there will be some element of compromise between the ideal blueprint plan and the facilities available on the market. This compromise may be on exact location, floor space, eaves height, number of bays or bay access. Our warehouse consultants can remodel the blueprint plan and test the potential impact to throughput rates and operating costs of any potential compromise that may need to be considered.
You can read more about how we can test the impact on transport and operating costs of different warehouse location options in our section on warehouse location analysis, or read our section on warehouse design to understand how we can model different warehouse configurations.
If you have concerns over the efficiency of your warehouse or want to know how to meet higher throughput, contact our experts today. We’re here to help. You can call us on +256703673864 or use our contact form:
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