Transport Hub and Public Building Logistics
To remain attractive, competitive and effective, busy public buildings need to be supported by robust, back of house operations. Railway stations, airport and ferry terminals, and shopping centres, for example, need to plan and manage 24 hour logistics operations to ensure their facilities remain fully stocked, clean, hygienic, environmentally friendly and well maintained.
Back of house circulation space often loses out to lucrative retail space, therefore requiring logistics teams and stakeholders to perform their functions in confined areas. Effectual processes and careful planning and management of service yard and associated horizontal and vertical logistics movements are vital to ensure congestion and disruption do not ensue.
o&i consulting works with facility operators, their logistics providers, architects, engineering companies and other stakeholders to design and create structured logistics environments. By collaborating in new facility designs in their early stages, as part of RIBA design phases, we ensure that end-to-end logistics flows are viable, functional and efficient. We work with design teams to plan ahead for future requirements; our analysts model the design capacity of planned facilities and flows against forecast demand to determine their longevity.
In existing logistics operations, we help clients to improve their performance and maximise asset utilisation by streamlining people, goods and vehicle movements; optimising goods-in waste-away (GIWA) processes and capacity; recommending how demand can be better planned and managed; and introducing logistics management strategies. Where required, we spend time in client operations, observing and measuring flows to fully understand demand profiles and process execution, and identify improvement opportunities. Our solutions determine how back-of-house GIWA operations can be designed to maximise yard space, storage, horizontal and vertical capacity, and staff time.
