Customer case studyGlobal multi-site restaurant creates efficiencies with reality capture for virtual store sites

The Challenge

A leading global quick-serve restaurant has ambitious goals to grow efficiently without compromising on its commitment to deliver the best customer experience in its ever-growing and evolving portfolio of stores. Managing the company’s construction velocity has historically been difficult: each new store typically takes two to three months to complete, and regional construction project managers oversee at least a dozen construction projects in different stages of completion across two-hundred stores in their respective regions. In the past, project teams regularly traveled to each store to ensure the GCs were building to design intent and communication was flowing. But with that kind of volume, maintaining quality control was becoming increasingly inefficient.

The Solution

When the global pandemic compounded this challenge, one of the company’s regional construction project managers went looking for a solution that would keep production running without requiring on-site visits. He discovered OpenSpace and was able to get it launched quickly. Using the reality capture solution, he could log in and easily manage projects and collaborate with his GCs and designers remotely across multiple locations. The company rolled out this new approach at a few stores before rapidly expanding to hundreds of locations within months. Now, OpenSpace is a standard for all their new construction and remodels.

OpenSpace enables project teams to visualize progress on their stores on any given day and communicate work to be completed in near-real time, catching errors before they would be costly or impossible to fix, flagging change orders and RFIs, and generating punch lists. On the design side, teams regularly refer to OpenSpace captures to quickly identify and address brand compliance issues such as an incorrect paint color, avoiding rework. Facilities management also started to use OpenSpace to better manage ongoing work orders across multiple stores. Complex systems are part of every build, and seeing behind walls to understand how piping and other equipment are installed has been a huge time saver.

The company also finds value in the continuity of the reliable visual record of as-builts OpenSpace provides throughout the process, from construction to facilities management. Having a centralized source of information with searchable designs linking floor plans to the project’s 360° images has been a game changer for the multi-site retailer.

The results

This leading global quick-serve restaurant gained significant efficiencies and cost savings by partnering with OpenSpace to create virtual stores that document progress and conditions across its entire store development and operations lifecycle in North America.

GCs were up and running after a single 30-minute onboarding session

The construction team works with different local contractors, and having a solution that was easy to use and widely adopted in the field was central to the project’s success. The company’s dedicated customer success manager from OpenSpace quickly trained the team and their service providers, such as GCs and maintenance technicians, enabling the implementation of OpenSpace at three stores in a matter of weeks. And when new team members and partners come on board, they can get up and running with OpenSpace quickly by taking brief, self-led online courses through OpenSpace Academy.

A full 360° view of the store was available at least twice a week during construction

Now real estate, design, construction, and facilities management teams, along with executives and other stakeholders, can verify how a project is progressing at any time. These insights bring confidence to the development team and speed to resolution for change orders, repairs, installations, and more.

Travel costs were reduced by 50%, freeing up important time for innovation and strategy

Travel to the construction sites cost about $1,000 per trip and took away time the regional construction project manager needed for other work. With remote collaboration, managers could shift more of their time from in-person site visits to strategic planning, bringing greater innovation to the company and its future.

Facilities saved about $230K on just one project with remote site surveys

With OpenSpace reality capture data, the company’s facilities management teams can easily conduct remote site surveys. Previously, they paid about $250 to send someone to do an in-person site survey. In a few months of rollout, one program manager shared that on a single facilities management project she avoided that fee on about 945 stores, adding up to a savings of $230,000—covering their cost of OpenSpace with just one project.