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Tenant coordination from township to city

Regardless of square meterage or retail footprint, Profica’s Tenant Coordination team delivers an effective service that places as much significance on consistent procedural and process implementation as it does on effective and interpersonal communication.
The TC team, based nationally but led by Lead Tenant Coordinator Lauren Marshall out of Profica’s head office, has a flexible and can-do approach to any scope of work. This is made possible by adopting a client and tenant-led communication process and ensuring that each project is set up according to the client’s specific requirements from the get-go.

The flexibility to meet client needs is evidenced in three current projects that include two of Old Mutuals’ retail assets, namely The Zone in Rosebank and Gateway shopping centre in Umhlanga, as well as Vukile’s Dobsonville shopping centre, Soweto’s first and enduring township centre. For The Zone, Profica’s TC team located tenants into a reconfigured area. Although only a handful of tenants, requirements were varied given that the mix included international brands (Hamley’s toy store), national (Clicks), an independent coffee shop and two small kiosks. At Gateway the team is involved in the simultaneous placement and relocation of around 100 tenants that includes nationals, regionals and international brands. The work at Dobsonville includes the placement and relocation of approximately 30 tenants ranging from national brands like Sportscene and Mr Price to small line shops, optometrists and doctors’ rooms. In addition , Profica is coordinating the tenant installations for One Property, across upwards of 10 centres spread across Gauteng.

Lauren says, “While some centres have established processes and procedures when it comes to TC liaison, there are some centres that are quite loose in their tenant engagement. Occasionally Profica is required to come up with a hybrid approach that takes the current TC processes that are being followed at the retail centre and merging these with the Profica-specific Tenant Coordination Service Realisation. Our methodology is built specifically to allow this flexibility.” The TC services include programming, planning, interfacing with the client, liaising with the tenant and professional team, and snagging.

While Profica’s TC team works within a rigorous process, Lauren says that its crucial to be cognisant of the fact that underlying TC is a strong ‘human element’. She says, “For example, experience has taught us that the design submission process can be challenging. For some smaller, independent tenants we come across instances where they haven’t understood the requirements that must be followed prior to fit out commencement and, ultimately, trade. Even though issues like scope of work were included in lease agreements and generally closed out during this time, our team may find themselves having to spend time with a tenant outlining the requirements. It is important for us to ensure that the tenants are comfortable with the process so that we can obtain their commitment to dates and providing programme feedback. Our objective is to meet the specific clients milestones within strict timing guidelines.”

The ultimate marker of success can be empirically measured in terms of the numbers of tenants that complete their fitouts timeously and meet their trade dates as agreed to with the client. But more importantly for Profica’s TC team, is that effective and ongoing communication has resulted in the conclusion of a project where both the client and their tenants have been at ease throughout the process and are highly satisfied at the conclusion of the project.

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