Cantel
Cantel is a leading provider of infection prevention products and services in the healthcare market. As a medical device and chemical manufacturer, they specialize in Endoscopy, water purification and filtration, and healthcare disposables. Unispace was actively working on 9 projects with Cantel worldwide, while my local team in Minneapolis was in the process of designing 4 of them when the biggest opportunity was presented to us. Cantel was growing out of their current Minnesota facilities, which were spread across multiple locations, enabling silos within their business. The board of directors wanted to create a new headquarters to bring their teams together under one roof and better represent the evolved Brand. Recently Cantel Medical, which previously had many business sector division names, consolidated simply to Cantel. As their website states, “Our ecosystem of product and service offerings comes together in our Complete Circle of Protection, an infection prevention program designed to help you streamline reprocessing workflow, improve department efficiency and reduce the risk of infection.”
We soon learned that this was not going to be a small or simple project. Cantel had set their sights on the former Select Comfort headquarters at 9800 59th Avenue N. in Plymouth. The building was 160,000 SF with 4 floors and an attached full-size gymnasium, with basketball court, which they intended to use for all hand’s meetings and gatherings. To reinforce their brand and breadth of services, there was heavy focus on creating dynamic spaces at key client facing areas like the reception, product showroom, Innovation Center, and customer training spaces. Most of these required functioning labs and mock procedure rooms. Water is a key component in much of their processes, so extensive plumbing and infrastructure were needed. Cantel also intended to utilize one quadrant of a floor to construct a new 20,000 SF R&D lab with an adjacent maker space to support their chemistry, microbiology, engineering, and instrumentation departments. These areas would require intensive building modifications to turn a portion of the previous office space into a complex lab environment. What made this more challenging was our discovery through the design process that the lab needed to be on the second floor. This would require a complex code analysis and implementation, plus a lift to deliver chemicals from the dock on the first floor. As Design Principal on the project I guided the team through the process to ensure that we met the goals and schedule set forth with much success. As affirmed by our client contact, Jamie Riddle, who said his boss “raves every time he comes into the building. He Loves it!”
Beyond the design challenge that this project was, the negotiations for the contract were equally complex. Unispace was asked to provide an extensively detailed statement of work, in the client’s own format, with a fee breakdown for each phase and task. It also included 10 key milestone dates, from the signing of the SOW to partial occupancy, with an associated invoicing schedule. This accelerated project required the design and complete renovation of the building, with new finishes and furniture throughout, in 5 months and therefore the contract had to be precise. I composed this SOW in partnership with Cantel’s Senior Director of Global Real Estate, Facilities & EHS, who would review and comment through 12+ versions until we had an agreement that could be signed.