WeinPlus develops CLEAR process improvement solution

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. --- WeinPlus Real Estate Advisory Services in St. Petersburg plans to trademark the CLEAR process improvement system it developed for its clients including both publicly traded and private real estate owners, a leading grocery retailer and a public school district.

Rachel Elias Wein, AIA, principal of WeinPlus, said her CLEAR process improvement technique has applications in many industries besides commercial real estate development.

CLEAR is highly effective, Wein said, because it is logical, practical and productive.

Already, CLEAR has helped a publicly traded REIT dramatically improve its tenant coordination procedures by increasing efficiency, directly resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional revenue.

“CLEAR stands for Collaborate, Learn, Evaluate, Act and Respond,” Wein explained.

“This system coordinates all the moving parts of a management team to increase efficiency and generate a more desirable — and profitable — level of productivity,” she said. “The first step is to collaborate and learn about the challenges we’re facing,” Wein said. “We talk with everyone on the team. We interview, we get it all out in the open,” she explained.

Most challenges focus on three principal constraints: cost, quality and time. Typically focus is on cost, , Wein said, but real cost can be deceptive.

“Sometimes, a manager will sacrifice time and quality to control costs,” Wein explained. “There’s a perception that dollars are everything, but the team expense should be measured as well. An additional four approvals for a minor cost likely lose more value in time expended than in direct expense.” she said.

Sometimes developers who spend more money to increase the speed at which a project is completed will end up generating greater returns because the finished product is available sooner for customers or tenants.

Once the challenges are clearly identified by the entire management team, WeinPlus works with the team to evaluate action steps to increase productivity.

“Then we act,” Wein said. “We do a test implantation to see if we can change our process to increase productivity and then respond to that action to determine how to continually improve the process,” she said.

Wein said, “CLEAR serves as an excellent organizational tool for projects that require the coordinated efforts of several different departments.

“Departments within a corporate culture have a tendency to evolve independently,” Wein said. “CLEAR is a way to learn and analyze the best practices within and outside each department and maximize the benefits throughout the entire company.”