Sainsbury eyes D&B

Supermarket giant Sainsbury is to move away from its traditional method of procurement and use design-and-build to construct 200 new convenience stores over the next three years.

For the past nine years the company has used construction management to build its superstores, but it has switched to design-and-build for its new 300m2 'Locals' stores because "they will be much quicker jobs and more of them."

Sainsbury used design-and-build for its latest store near Victoria station and this has already "proved a big success."

Design-and-build will also be used for Locals at sites in Camden and Paddington station, which are due to open in October and December respectively, and for the 35 stores being built in 2000 and 80 in both 2001 and 2002.

Alan Saunders, Sainsbury's construction resources manager, said: "In the past, we have used construction management or management contracting and this will still be the case when we are constructing superstores.

"However, design-and-build would be better for us because we feel our project managers could be much more hands-off and wouldn't have to have day-to-day involvement in the stores. It will also enable us to give blocks of stores, say five or six at a time, to one company to work on, which helps with continuity."

Saunders added: "We are hoping that the Locals stores could be completed in about 12 weeks."

Saunders said the idea to use design-and-build "just evolved." "We like to work with a tight set of people. We didn't want to dilute the experience we were getting from the construction managers because we wanted to keep them on the big superstores. We are using people that we already have experience of so we are able to put a design team in with a contractor that we work with."

Sainsbury did not want to reveal what companies will be involved in future building projects because only two more stores are being built during 1999. Saunders added that the three firms that work on the superstores - Bowmer and Kirkland, Walter Llewellyn, and Kier Western - were not being considered for the Locals.

"It would be different if we were doing 200 this year," said Saunders. "Longcross [the property developer] worked on the Victoria store and it will do the Camden store too. We have gone to people we have wanted rather than invited tenders and are evaluating submissions at this stage."