Our commercial business grew organically from our reputation of doing strong custom residential work and by building and maintaining relationships with our industry partners. We are fortunate to work with a commercial client who has big dreams and even bigger plans for making those dreams a reality. If you haven't yet heard of them, we invite you to come out from under that rock and bask in the beery bliss of planet BrewDog.
We worked alongside team BrewDog USA to bring their take on craft beer culture to the frontlines of Columbus. Previous projects with them included their North American headquarters, brewery, and taproom in Canal Winchester, a brewpub in the Short North and a taproom with a rooftop patio in Franklinton. So, after all of that... Edgework Creative landed the motherload of them all, DogHouse Hotel Columbus.
Helping a commercial client outfit the world's first craft beer hotel is definitely something we could have never imagined taking on when we started this business, but we have tackled a lot of other seemingly crazy ideas in our time. So, why the hell not? Landing this project was honestly a dream come true, and something that has changed the trajectory of our business for good.
One Epic Hotel Project
Had we done commercial projects before? Yes. Had we done a commercial project like DogHouse before? No. DogHouse Hotel stands alone in many ways from other commercial projects in our portfolio. Our scope included the fabrication of components for all 32 hotel rooms. These furniture items and components included, headboards, bed frames, nightstands, kitchenettes, credenzas, wardrobes, desks, and dressers. It was A LOT of material... and with so many large moving parts, it was an orchestration.
Challenges
With a big project comes big challenges... coordination between project vendors, synchronization of timelines, fabrication logistics, and installation.
One massive perk in working on a commercial project with Edgework Creative is that we do millwork, metalwork, and finishing all under one roof. This cuts down on the cross-vendor communication and streamlines the production process, which often comes as a huge relief to the client's never-ending project management to-do list.
For the DogHouse Hotel project, we were going to have a large number of large-scale goods in production at the same time. We avoided traffic jams and shop congestion by luckily acquiring additional shop space, expanding our workshop by 20%. This extra breathing room was essential for the flow of production and for keeping our crew's workspace as airy as possible.
Another challenge we faced during the BrewDog hotel project was storing the finished components until they could be installed on site. We got creative and ordered mobile mini units to be on site that would get loaded up, picked up, and dropped off on location to be unloaded and installed when it came time. It became a fun game we like to call, 'High Stakes Tetris'.
Learnings
Our biggest project to date yielded some big takeaways. Here's what we learned:
- Communication is KEY. With so many involved parties, details and vendors... clear and transparent communication can make or break a project. In this case, we thrived.
- The devil is in the details. This is actually one of our company values, so it is a no-brainer. Managing, planning out, and physically drawing out the small details makes for a smooth build process.
- Prototyping is your friend. We built an entire room and test-installed it into the brewery before DogHouse was built. This allowed us to see everything come together, mitigate risks and work out the kinks before going dog wild.
- Panel saws are pretty great. We invested in one for this project specifically, which made repetitive cuts a breeze.
How It's Shaped Us
The BrewDog DogHouse Hotel project changed a lot of things for us internally, and also how we approach commercial partnerships. To be completely honest, this project went smoothly... which was a bit unexpected considering all of the factors. THAT FEELS AMAZING.
From this commercial hotel project, we gained more shop space, expanded our capabilities, worked together as a team on the same project at the same time, and proved that there truly is nothing that we can't do! Cheers to that.
"We love working with Edgework. The first project we did together the guys instantly understood the look we wanted and executed it perfectly. Edgework have been a valued partner on some of our biggest projects to date and have been amazing at working to our extremely tight deadlines. They have a really cool company culture and awesome work space. It is clear from the visits we have had to their workshop that everyone in the team is very talented and exceptionally passionate about the projects they are working on." - Keith Bennet, Special Projects | BrewDog
The DogHouse Columbus is open! from BrewDog on Vimeo.
