The Full Monty: Welcome to Premium Project Logistics

Let’s start by agreeing on one thing. Logistics. What a headache.

However wide-reaching and detailed your planning, something always goes wrong. It’s just the way of the world. Like a piece of dropped toast landing buttered- side down. Or buying Bitcoin at its peak price, just before the asset spectacularly skydives in value.

Thankfully, there are experts out there who’ve built an entire industry out of making sure your products get to where they need to be, when they need to be – delivered how they need to be. None more expert than Kuehne + Nagel – the global logistics provider that’s clocked up a staggering 125 years in business. With that much experience under their belts, these people have been everywhere and seen everything. They handle with care. And creativity.

When Architonic met Kuehne + Nagel
The idea’s simple. Two leaders in their respective industries. One outstanding service. Architonic has been successfully connecting architects with design manufacturers for 15 years now. But these premium brands have increasingly been asking us to help them find a better solution to their individual, existing logistics planning, in order to service the project needs of architects and other project owners more effectively.

So, Architonic, in cooperation with Kuehne + Nagel, has developed Premium Project Logistics – an end-to-end logistics service for manufacturers who supply products for use in high-end contract projects. Hotels, restaurants, cruise ships, casinos – every project is different and poses its own set of challenges, not only for general contractors but also for the individual suppliers who have to try to hit a moving target. Construction projects, as we all know, have an annoying habit of not going according to plan, and merely delivering your products curbside isn’t an option.

The extra mile. Without extra mileage.
Leveraging Kuehne + Nagel’s wealth of in-house expertise across its numerous competence centres in Europe, the Americas, the Middle East and Asia – as well as the company’s global network of specialists on the ground – Premium Project Logistics offers manufacturers a one-stop shop for their logistics needs. Depending on the scope and requirements of the job, the tailor-made service covers pre-delivery planning, freight-management with seamless tracking, customs clearance, warehousing if necessary, and delivery on site into each and every room your products need to be – meaning a turn-key, room-ready result. All expertly handled, of course, and with white-glove treatment if needed.

Windows can be small...
...both metaphorically and literally. Taking consignment of your products, Premium Project Logistics will ensure that they arrive on site at precisely the right moment in the often-fluid project timeline, meaning no deliveries are turned away because the construction site can’t, for whatever reason, take them that day – and, as a consequence, no unforeseen warehousing.

“In logistics, idle time means cost,” explains Kuehne + Nagel’s Global Head of Hotel & Cruise Logistics Holger Alvater. “These days, nobody has the financial luxury of having goods lying around in a warehouse, waiting for delivery. Yet, large-scale projects like hotels present a huge challenge in terms of delivery and installation, given their unpredictable nature.”

Whatever it takes
Situated at heart of the logistics operation, actively consolidating the various supply chains – and in constant contact with the general contractors, with the architects, with the owners, and with the investors – Kuehne + Nagel can create an optimal sequencing of everything that needs to happen to get the job done, reacting dynamically to situations as they’re changing by modifying that sequence.

What’s more, getting products beyond the curb and into the right part of a building – while construction is often ongoing – isn’t for the faint-hearted. Kuehne + Nagel have vast experience of highly complex and sometimes gravity-defying deliveries, which often involve goods going in via windows and other entry- points many storeys up due to construction constraints. And all under the watchful eye of their senior project managers.

Control freakery
“If we manage the entire conversation, and we know the requirements, then there’s no problem,” says Holger Alvater. “Each individual supplier packs their pallets in a different size. They would have to find out the exact size of the specific window or windows, for example, to make their delivery possible. We can tell them what size pallet, the maximum height, and so on. For all suppliers to that project.”

Taking complete control of the chain, both in operational and informational terms – and, in doing so, taking on full liability – Premium Project Logistics can help avoid excess costs via this sweet-spot combination of meticulous planning and reactive agility. This results in happy architects, happy owners, and, by extension, happy design manufacturers, as they’re more likely to have their products specified again for the next big project.

Premium Project Logistics launches this spring. The gloves are on.

© Architonic