Getting to know COVA
Getting to Know COVA
- As one of LFRA’s newest Associate Members, can you tell us a bit about COVA and the industries you work within?
Firstly, just wanted to note being a new Gold Associate member of LFRA, it is wonderful to already be experiencing how collaborative and welcoming the LFRA community is. We are excited to build a long-term partnership with LFRA and its members.
COVA is a privately owned multi-disciplinary engineering firm that offers innovative engineered design solutions to the built environment. We have offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart, Singapore, Phnom Penh, and Auckland.
COVA is first and foremost engineers, priding ourselves on our ability to find solutions to the most complex of projects.
We understand that every building is unique. COVA is known for our innovative design solutions across a variety of market sectors including healthcare, education, commercial, retail, residential, tourism & hospitality, right through to industrial and manufacturing, including D&C, EPC and EPCM delivery models.
- Can you expand on the services and capabilities you can offer to Large Format Retailers?
COVA’s history in the retail sector is extensive. We have been involved in the sector for over 15 years.
Whether it is large format, speciality stores, discount department stores, general department stores or food retailers, COVA has a solid team of experts who have worked across thousands of retail projects in Australia.
COVA understands what innovation looks like in a retail setting and how important the design impacts the customer experience. From feasibility to concept engineering, through to lighting design (including fixture design), and full engineered scopes, we provide a beginning to end solution for our clients.
One area most people would find interesting is our direct sourcing and procurement advisory, where we assist our clients in directly procuring light fixtures and other large volume services related equipment from various Asian countries. As a result of our industrial design and procure methodologies we have saved significant capex for HomeCo in particular.
COVA is setting the standard for the future of retail. We are consistently delivering unique and modern solutions for nation-wide retailers.
- And what about your experience in store conversions and retailers downsizing?
HomeCo chose to partner with COVA to repurpose their newly acquired Masters facilities into new Homemaker style centres with a selection of specialty and food and beverage outlets.
This was a momentous national roll out totalling over $1 billion worth of refurbishment work. With a broad retail knowledge, we were well placed to detail the specific needs of each retail outlet, including the direct procurement of lighting fixtures to visually enhance each store.
COVA has also been involved in many discount department store conversions nationally, with the most recent being the enormous conversion and closure project undertaken by Kmart Group. Over the last 12 months COVA has been part of the team to convert large Target stores to Kmart. This in total added over 212,000m2 of retail floor space to Kmart and was delivered amongst floods, cyclones, lockdowns, border closures, and shipping delays.
COVA also has a great understanding of retailers downsizing. We have worked with Myer throughout their 60+ locations and Kmart Bourke Street to reduce their retail space from two to one floor.
- Nobody predicted anything like COVID-19 to happen. How has the COVA team responded to the pandemic?
Our priority has always been the health and safety of people.
Prior to the pandemic COVA was moving towards a national resource pool based on providing the right skills for the project, rather than the geographical location of someone.
We found embracing flexible ways of working allowed our team to fully discover their potential and passion. Therefore, when the pandemic hit last year, we were already well equipped with flexible working procedures and the required technology for our staff. We hit the accelerator and vastly critiqued our processes ensuring efficient continuity to deliver all projects.
COVA has found a good working balance with people working from home and office-based staff. The use of Microsoft Teams and daily resource meetings helps us work smarter across states. Also going 100% paperless, video conferencing, multitasking during meetings all played a pivotal role in COVA’s continued success.
On a more social-conscious level, we have also delivered care packages to all our staff in Melbourne and Sydney during their extended lockdowns and have virtual drinks every Friday afternoon, we have coupled these with both a casual education session and team building over a drink.
As an organisation, the pandemic has only affirmed that we have an incredibly dedicated, loyal, and hardworking team. A higher level of confidence and trust has been fostered within COVA. We have evolved stronger through this pandemic.
- And finally, what can we expect from COVA in the coming months?
Through the pandemic COVA has strengthened its delivery to clients and have outperformed the market. We are well positioned to help the entire construction industry bounce back.
There are some exciting announcements to be made over the coming months around the great people of COVA and projects we are currently negotiating.
We look forward to continuing to connect with the welcoming LFRA community.
Let’s hope many of us can meet face-to-face sooner rather than later at the next LFRA Forum.
