Questions about Ritz-Carlton Laguna Beach, answered in the words of the people who did the work. The engagement itself is on its own page.
What was the hardest sequencing decision around the hotel's ongoing operations?
It is always about the guest at the Ritz-Carlton. The hardest call was staging. The hotel runs around its guests, so we worked in the middle of the night and staged material deep in the valet lot in a cordoned-off area. Moving it to the patio, we used the service paths, which are never the direct route, so no guest ever saw a crew or a pallet come through. The trade-off was time. Every trip ran longer and the job took longer, and the guests never felt it.
At handoff, what showed that the extra time had protected the guest experience?
We had no complaints, and we got paid on time, with no holdback. That is how you usually tell whether a job went well. When a client is not happy, they try to hold your retention or take money back. There was none of that at the Ritz-Carlton. The guests never felt the work, and at handoff nobody was looking for a reason to keep money. That is the evidence we trust.
What quality detail was insisted on because a patio can look small enough to overlook?
Mostly it was who we sent. We run A, B and C crews, and this one got the A crew: our best trades and our best in-house labor. Shirts tucked in and a consistent look across the whole crew were mandatory on this job. We paid those people well for it.