Fitting Out Shopping Plaza in Winnipeg Without Moving the Opening Date

The challenge

Shopping Plaza had a signed lease and an opening date, and the two were not negotiable. Everything else — permit timing, long-lead millwork, the landlord’s rules about working hours in a live building — had to fit around a day that could not move.

A fit-out with a fixed end is really a scheduling problem wearing a construction problem’s clothes. The risk is rarely the building work itself. It is the week lost waiting on an inspection nobody booked.

What we did

WeReno acted as owner’s representative from permit to handover. We drew the scope before anyone priced it, so the bids that came back in Winnipeg were three prices for one job rather than three different jobs.

Long-lead items were ordered against the schedule rather than against progress on site, and every trade was booked to a date that assumed the inspection ahead of it would take its full window rather than its best case.

The outcome

Shopping Plaza opened on the date in the lease. The change orders that came up were priced against the award and approved before the work happened, so the final number was one the owner had already seen.