Project Spotlight - Hyatt Regency Convention Hotel
Managing Success
Braun’s Project Management delivers end-to-end consultative services in the design, construction, and operation of the laundry facility at the Hyatt Regency Convention Hotel in Seattle, Washington, the Pacific Northwest’s largest Hotel.
While the premier centerpiece of hospitality in Seattle, Washington was still just a vision, Braun’s Project Management Team was already hard at work providing consultative services to the owners, architects and engineers. The new construction of a 45-story mixed use high rise featuring 1,260 hotel rooms, three restaurants, 100,000 square feet of meeting and conference centers, and two ballrooms, required the laundry contractor have a commitment to sound design principles, a deep understanding of laundry processing requirements, and project management experience that only Braun is positioned to provide. From the modeling of the waste water stream, utility design, facility layout and detailed production analysis, Braun integrated with the construction team to design and build a facility that not only supports the current hotel but will also allow the work of three additional properties to be completed at the state-of-the-art laundry at the Hyatt Regency.
Braun’s compliment of design services allowed the laundry, material handling systems, valet and utility systems to be designed and developed through Building Information Modeling BIM). The BIM design process provided a visual build-out of the facility and accurate forecasting of materials, timing of critical path requirements, and deconfliction of adjacent design components to facilitate a flexible and cost-efficient transition from design through build. Laundry facility design continues to be driven by the capital outlay requirements, for both initial investment and working capital, necessary to achieve a desired level of production capacity and the respective return on investment of the project. This starts with integration of a capable laundry equipment provider as the management begins developing the future business requirements of the facility. Initial planning considerations and equipment capabilities can therefore be appropriately included into the capacity analysis and facility infrastructure requirements during planning. The process ends when the project is fully functional and on track, or exceeding, initial projections for production. Braun’s integrated approach to project management provides industry experience across every facet of laundry production and design. It is critical that owners and operators track performance post project implementation to assure real operating production results meet the initial projects stated objectives and therefore track towards the return on investment. Braun’s WASHNET® decision support software has the capacity to provide real time production reporting and utility monitoring to managers so they may efficiently monitor their investment and manage operations. Purely designing a facility layout no longer provides clients with a value added service and can be a hinderance to actual project development.
Braun’s integration with the Hyatt Regency’s Team provided the opportunity to install a turnkey commercial laundry solution located three floors below grade. Braun managed the complete build out of the laundry and stayed onboard to get the team off and running. Soiled linen is fed to the laundry through a common chute, available to housekeepers on all 45 stories of the hotel. The linen is received directly onto a storage conveyor system that feeds the 12-station sorting conveyor and allows manual loading of off premise goods through a cart dumper. Operators input full slings into the system which are fed according to the managers production schedule into the tunnel system. The design allows the facility to achieve industry leading pounds per operator hour through an ergonomic flow of material, a critical design requirement incorporated by Braun during initial objective identification with the owners.
A Braun 150 Batch Tunnel Washer and Press System is complimented by three true side-by-side 300PBS System Dryers and a bypass location that feed to a common unload conveyor. The small footprint of the tunnel system maximizes productive use of the operating space and routing of the rail system allows incorporation of two standalone open pocket washers and a Braun 300PT dryer for small batch and quick turnaround linen needs. The tunnel’s single helicoid design offers a hygienic and productive solution to the properties mix of Hotel, Spa, and F&B (food & beverage) linen.
The system unloads to a clean side rail lift where goods are routed to one of two Braun Precision Series® Ironing Lines or Small Piece Folders. The ironing lines feature Braun’s Precision Series® Spreader Feeder and provide dual sorting of finished goods before discharging onto a common finished goods takeaway conveyor. The single point pack out is collocated to the finished goods storage area and hospitality elevators for low par requirements and efficient flow of material through the laundry.
Braun’s customer and processing focused approach to Project Management allowed the team to design and develop a complex laundry solution to service three restaurants, a combination of over 2,000 hotel rooms, multiple spas and a convention space in under 9,300 Square Feet. Braun’s focus on design and analytics provides its customers with best-in-class management of the process through partnership with clients from the start. The laundry team now utilizes integrated systems reporting to manage the facility and is meeting production targets to realize their return on investment.
- D. Palmer