Time-based Migration Plan Achieves Cost Avoidance for Wells Fargo

Aiming to exit two leased facilities, backfill an owned building, and reunite departmental groups, Wells Fargo Bank successfully completed a two-year restack, consisting of approximately 40 projects that moved about 5,000 employees and touched roughly 1.1 million sf in seven Charlotte, N.C., facilities. A time-based migration planning process allowed Lori Ferguson, Wells Fargo senior properties project manager, and her team to keep the gargantuan task on track as it implemented the corporate strategy.

The intensely collaborative process, devised by Little Diversified Architecture Consulting, entailed extensive data gathering on space demand—current and future headcounts and user group requirements, adjacencies, and IT provisions—and space supply, including finish levels, space configurations, and capacities.

Measures that contributed to the planning success include an early identification of, and constant focus on, project dependencies and workstreams. This was a critical component to ensuring the success of this highly complex program. A delay in any one project would result in numerous downstream impacts to other projects and workstreams. Additional contributing factors included gaining early buy-in from the affected lines of business, balancing project manager workloads, and adopting preemptive and ongoing communication of planned locations, key milestones, and budget impact.

Wells Fargo’s corporate real estate group and Little embarked on the restack in late 2011 with extensive validation of headcount data, existing capital projects, and confirmation of line-of-business space commitments. The migration planning process was launched before year end. The entire assignment was complete by November 2013, with the majority of moves taking place from December 2012 to May 2013.

While an unexpected midstream surge in headcount led the bank to retain one leased building, the restack promoted cost avoidance and met timing parameters, aligning occupant groups with appropriate space and skirting the need to take on new real estate. The planning team capitalized on schedule opportunities to minimize costs by leveraging existing construction projects and expediting future refurbishing projects on vacant floors.  

“We had to be proactive and develop a migration plan that represented the most cost-effective approach. The plan had to be as efficient as possible and limit the amount of disruption to our employees,” says Ferguson.

Dynamic Process 

Little’s original intention was to draw critical occupancy and supply/demand data from Wells Fargo’s internal Computer Aided Facility Management (CAFM) system, but things did not go as planned.

“When we started running reports, we saw that our CAFM department codes for our lines of business did not align with the nomenclature we used for tracking our department forecasts,” explains Ferguson. “We were able to use our software tool, FM:Interact^®, but we had to line up the business department names and codes so the data would make sense. It was definitely a learning opportunity.”

With the assistance of Little partner Susan Hensey and Phil Tackett, occupancy planner and senior associate, Ferguson and Alice Olvera, strategic space planner for Wells Fargo, embarked on various scenario planning exercises. Lacking a single mass of space large enough to house all employees vacating the leased facilities, the team went through multiple iterations.

“We had to identify all the groups that needed to move out of the way in order to create the target pockets of space,” says Ferguson. “Then we had to put a timeline around that activity to ensure that we could effectively move those people and exit our leased facilities before the lease expiration to avoid a holdover penalty.”

A major goal was to prevent swing moves, temporary employee relocations. It was also a priority to align the right line of business with the right type of space. “For example, we didn’t want to place a client-facing group in a back-of-house type of space,” says Ferguson. Another big consideration was to provide workspace according to corporate space guidelines, assigning hard-walled offices only as appropriate. This proved a challenge as the office/workstation mix varied per floor, and the cost and time of reconfiguration to meet the ratio could hinder the plan.

The process was highly interactive. Early on, project durations were determined and project dependencies identified. “Oftentimes, several projects were dependent upon construction completing or a department moving out of the way,” says Ferguson. “These projects ultimately impacted the ability to vacate a leased facility. By examining the project dependencies, we were able to discern three distinct workstreams. Recognizing this early on and closely monitoring it were two of the single biggest factors contributing to the success of the program.”

“We would write department names on sticky notes and draw arrows to identify move-in and move-out,” Ferguson says. “Then we identified all projects that needed to occur within that workstream. It was a key activity that was continually modified with each new insight about our portfolio and user needs. We used a lot of sticky notes.”

The planning operations were housed in a “war room” where all the data was visible to the team as it moved ahead to apply the timing model. A large calendar was posted on the wall, then filled with all the collected information, including blackout dates and holidays.

“Phases were identified across the top, while along the side was a list of all the floors and groups and their sizes involved in the migration,” explains Tackett. “Then we matched each one of those groups across time through those phases from their initial location to where we wanted them to be in the endgame.”

Attaching durations to each project, planners looked at issues like construction timeframes and whether furniture reconfigurations were necessary. They also applied filters, such as holidays, IT moratoriums, and the Democratic National Convention (DNC) scheduled for Charlotte in September 2012. “I’m glad we factored that in, because all moves were shut down for a solid two weeks,” notes Ferguson.

Tackett emphasizes that quick visual access to the data significantly enhanced decision-making, for example on the potential schedule roadblocks when a renovation would require occupants to move out of a space. 

“We needed to have all of that information up in front of us in order to make the right decisions,” he says.

Resource Loading

The desire to avoid resource overloading, especially in the area of IT support, played a key role in setting the migration schedule. With the number of individual moves over a weekend ranging from 20 to 500, the team applied load-leveling to align resource capacity with the demands of each move.

Some moves were shifted out of peak periods to even out imbalances, while others were able to proceed because of a fortunate discovery. Drilling down into specific resource projected workloads, planners learned that the bank actually had two technology groups supporting occupants, the first focused on trading and investment banking, the second for all other operations. The separate support teams allowed more moves to take place at the same time.

“Initially when we had a move of 500 people over one weekend, it looked too ambitious,” says Ferguson. “But we found the trader IT group could handle up to 300 moves, and the general IT group could handle roughly 250, so these were actually two different, very manageable simultaneous projects.”

Every effort was made to keep the same project manager throughout a workstream of interdependent projects to achieve the identified goals. For example, one of the leased facilities contained a television studio, which had specific deck-to-deck height requirements. There was only one floor in the entire target space cluster that could accommodate the relocated studio. Because that floor was already occupied, the planning team had to identify and outfit new homes for those groups.

In all, Ferguson estimates that there were eight different projects/moves related to that one workstream. In that case, and on other projects, the team was always on the lookout for additional work that could be done while spaces were temporarily vacated, including new carpeting and workstation reconfigurations.

Having the same project manager throughout gave one individual knowledge of every critical move along the path to the endgame, which kept them on top of all the dependencies impacting their ultimate goals.

“If milestone dates slipped on one of the phases, the project manager would be aware of the delay and its downstream impacts and could then make the necessary adjustments,” says Tackett.

With the peak loads identified in the phasing plan, an assistant project manager could be brought in for additional help. Such was the case in February 2013, when there was a move every weekend.

“That was way too much work for just one project manager,” comments Ferguson.

Early Buy-In

After exploring the various scenarios and crafting several alternatives, the team narrowed the field to what it felt was the best option. Before the plan was presented to corporate property leadership in February 2012, relationship managers who represented the affected lines of business weighed in on the proposed option.

“It was very important to have this liaison,” says Ferguson. “We wanted their gut reaction as to whether the lines of business would be in favor of these plans.”

Once the corporate property group issued its approval, Ferguson and the relationship managers presented a rough timeframe and high-level budget for the restack to the impacted lines of business. This outreach accomplished two objectives. First, it secured early buy-in from the occupant groups, confirming that the plan passed essential tests—for suitability, feasibility, and acceptability—just as it had at the corporate properties level.  

It also allowed the planning team to paint the big picture and convey realistic expectations, clarifying that the plan was fluid and subject to modification down the road.

“Everyone was anxious to consolidate and wanted to move right away,” says Ferguson. “When we showed them the phasing plan indicating which projects needed to occur first, they could see their own move as a piece in the puzzle and put the timing into perspective.”

The outreach was also useful in confirming budgets. With the tentative line-up in place, the planning team also shared rough order-of-magnitude costs for each project, which had to be identified and approved by the funding source. The corporate property group paid for groups that were forced to vacate their current space, while the individual lines of business paid for their own consolidation requests.

“It was key to make the lines of business aware of costs to make sure they had an appetite for the budget,” says Ferguson. “We didn’t want to start implementing a wonderful plan and then have a group change its mind.”

Once the line of business approved the rough order-of-magnitude budget, individual project managers began detailing the scope of work, obtaining more accurate budgets, and fine-tuning the phasing plan—dependencies, workstream, etc. In the fall of 2012, individual project managers were assigned to the workstreams and started to collaborate with the user groups to prepare for the moves on a granular level. 

Useful Tools

After consolidating data from FM:Interact^®, linking the internal planning data, and combining ad-hoc and disparate spreadsheets into one master data source in Excel^®, Ferguson’s team was able to develop most of its implementation and communications tools on its own. Ideally, data and reports would have been in one master system to allow for ease in reporting and modifications. However, the timeframe and budget required utilizing the software and tools at hand, so the team crafted custom spreadsheets, such as the tool for determining the rough order-of-magnitude scope and budget.

An Excel^® spreadsheet was also created to provide quick internal status updates for the team. Still, the report did not replace the need for regular meetings between the project managers and technology team to discuss progress and risks.

“If we saw the risk of a project date slipping, we could quickly identify the impact and communicate among all team members on how to adapt to that change,” says Ferguson.

The team also used a monthly dashboard tool, a high-level document distributed internally to corporate leadership and all relationship managers. The single page summarized budget and timing performance and included a 30-month “look-ahead.” The program was color-coded green, yellow, or red to indicate risk, so mitigation plans could be prepared.

Looking back, Ferguson views the time-based planning approach as the key to success on a very complex program.

“We were able to develop a well-thought-out plan, put a timeline around that plan, and then ensure that it met our three goals from the beginning. I feel like we were really able to limit disruptions and avoid unnecessary spend. Overall, it went very smoothly, especially with the help of Little,” she concludes.

By Nicole Zaro Stahl

This article is based on a presentation Ferguson, Tackett, and Hensey gave at Tradeline’s Space Strategies 2013 conference.