Kitty Campbell always wanted to be an interior designer. As design and project manager for clothing retailer Reitmans Canada Ltd., Central Canada Division, she came into the position the long way around.
Women in Construction
Kitty Campbell always wanted to be an interior designer. As design and project manager for clothing retailer Reitmans Canada Ltd., Central Canada Division, she came into the position the long way around.
“I started out with a career in office management,” says Campbell.
“I worked at Canada Trust and was recruited by a client, Mega Wraps to help start a chain of restaurants from the ground up.
“I was the operations manager and responsible for franchisee training and another person was looking after construction.”
After that person left, Campbell was drawn into the vacancy, relishing her turn as a construction supervisor.
“I assumed his responsibilities and became a self-taught project manager,” she says.
“I was soon overseeing all construction and fell into the position I always wanted.”
Campbell was later hired by the Fairweather group as director of construction, working there for three years before the Reitmans position opened five years ago.
She is one of three design and project managers overseeing construction projects for Reitmans’ seven brands — Reitmans, Smart Set, Thyme Maternity, Addition Elle, Penningtons, RW & CO., and Cassis — comprising almost 1,000 retail outlets across Canada. The Central Canada territory extends roughly from Windsor to north of Thunder Bay, east to Brockville and west to Winnipeg — occasionally inside the city limits.
The company’s design managers create the look they want to achieve at the Montreal head office and convey that information to project managers.
“I’m responsible for maintaining the integrity of the design,” says Campbell. “I have to be very familiar with the concepts they’ve created.”
Campbell also works in tendering. While many privately held retailers don’t tender construction work, Reitmans is a publicly traded company, offering up each project to competitive bids.
Reitmans leases properties inside malls or power centres, so Campbell is called in once the basic structure has been completed.
She’s responsible for the installation of all of the interior elements and fixtures. Part of her job involves ensuring that designs meet local and provincial building codes.
“One of the Thyme Maternity concepts involved a ceiling material with fins as a design element,” she says.
“In Montreal, we could locate the sprinkler system flush with the fins and conceal them, but in Toronto, the cover material used on the sprinkler system wasn’t acceptable because it wasn’t considered non-combustible.”
Campbell, in conjunction with the general contractor, Belle Interiors, offered a number of possible solutions, eventually settling on running lengths of inverted PVC pipes through the ceiling, with sprinklers recessed inside them.
While the retailer is working to incorporate more environmentally-friendly elements into its designs, at this point it’s the landlord who determines whether a development will be LEED certified.
“The landlord in one of our Brantford outlets recently announced that the development had become LEED certified and that all GCs needed to be LEED certified as well,” she says.
“That’s difficult to handle on short notice, but we’re working hard to implement as many new materials, more efficient lighting and new building techniques as possible.”
The job keeps Campbell busy as she travels her territory, managing between five and 15 projects simultaneously as a fickle fashion market forces the retailer to keep ahead of trends.
“When new retailers come in from the U.K. or the U.S., we really need to stand out,” she says.
“Sometimes you think you’ve nailed the design, but it still needs some tweaking. One minute it’s roll-up entry doors and the next it’s sliding glass entries — trends change all the time.”
Recent Comments
comments for this post are closed