3 Steps to Expedite Your Cultivation Without Added Costs

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Getting a cultivation to grow quickly takes planning, foresight, and coordination. If you want to expedite your facility without creating additional costs, keep these 3 steps in mind:

Step 1

Prepare your Foundational Plan. 

“By Failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail” – Benjamin Franklin

Once you’ve selected a site and completed your due diligence, create a high-level plan for the development of your facility. This plan should consider all aspects of how your facility will function and include a schematic of your facility layout with a focus on optimizing production and minimizing operating costs.

With an understanding of your operational flow, budget, equipment, and long-term plan, you’ll have the facts you need to help you right size all items for your facility before final design. This knowledge is essential to aligning your entire project team, plus it will give you a framework to foresee and discuss important future decisions and tackle critical points that may slow down your project in the full design phase.

Step 2

Make your Temporary Grow a Component of Your Permanent Grow.

“Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.” – Pablo Picasso

If your state requires you to be operational quickly to secure a license, any temporary grow solution should be integrated into your permanent grow. Many options exist, such as grow pods, retrofitting an existing structure, or using a temporary structure. No matter the option, design it into your Master Plan. Part of your plan should include the creation of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) that will work for you in the short term and be adapted for the long term.

In addition, once you are beyond the initial planning phase and moving into preconstruction, you should identify long lead time items and equipment so you can execute early procurement to avoid the frustration of future delays.

Step 3

Align your Budget to Fit Your Grow.

“It is not necessary to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results.” – Warren Buffett

Understanding your budget as it correlates to your specific plan is critical. Many companies overreach when it’s better to maximize efficiency with the resources on hand. Companies that ramp up too fast based on optimistic projections rather than actual market demand often find themselves in trouble.

Designing and building your facility for expansion that is aligned with your fundraising and realistic growth is more achievable. It all starts with proper foundational planning and having the key information and insights on how to best execute on your plans.

About the author: Jeff Lair is Director of Architecture and Engineering at DAG. With experience in nearly 200 cultivation projects, Mr. Lair is one of the leading professionals for creating operational efficiencies and leading successful cultivation projects throughout North America.

3 Common Mistakes

Cannabis Facilities – 3 Common Mistakes

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Planning, designing, and building for cultivation is no easy task. Here are some of the most common errors we found hamper your ability to get operational quickly and grow effectively.

#1 Skipping a Review of Your Site Plan or Existing Building.

Make sure professionals specific to agriculture review your site plan or building before purchase or lease. Understanding the parameters needed for an efficiently designed facility is essential to site selection.

#2 Maximizing Canopy at the Expense of Operational Function

Everyone wants to maximize canopy space, but often there is a lack of consideration for accurate space allocations to access and maintain your equipment, or for your operational workflow. As a result of these design flaws, you will be building in ongoing disruptions to your production cycle.

#3 Waiting Too Long for Procuring Your Equipment.

This may be the most common mistake of all. Early procurement is a must… don’t wait until dimensions and construction drawings are completed to finalize your equipment purchases. Equipment that arrives late will create expensive stoppages.

 

Facility Panel

Learn from Industry Leaders- Best Practices for Building Your Cultivation Facility

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DAG Facilities Hires Jeffrey Lair to Lead Design

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Miami – DominionAG (DAG) – North America’s leading Engineering, Procurement & Construction (EPC) firm for Controlled Environment Agriculture facilities – is pleased to announce the hiring of Jeffrey Lair as Director of Architecture & Engineering, effective July 12, 2021.  In this role, Mr. Lair will report to Mark Gemignani, CEO of DAG, and will oversee design operations for the company.Mr. Lair will be responsible for all design and planning related activities across the entire facility development cycle. He will direct and manage contracted professional service providers including architects, engineers and consultants and oversee the evaluation and selection of key systems and equipment suppliers. He will also support our sales and project management teams by leveraging his years of direct experience designing and commissioning high-performance CEA facilities to deliver smart, efficient solutions to our customers.“Jeff brings with him an incredible wealth of expertise about cultivation facilities, particularly when it comes to mechanical systems, fertigation, automation and operations,” said Mark Gemignani. “Given that he has commissioned more that 100 cultivation facilities – more than anyone else in North America – and has acquired the practical knowledge of what makes a growing facility operate at a high level, I can’t imagine anyone better suited to spearhead our design efforts and help us continue delivering best-in-class CEA facilities to our clients. We are thrilled to have him on our team.”

“Bringing Jeff’s expertise in-house is a game changer for DAG,” added Christopher Block, DAG’s Director of Corporate Development. “Combining his engineering acumen, plus his knowledge of the inner workings of the most advanced CEA facilities in the world, with DAG’s exceptional construction capabilities positions us to be the firm of first choice for growers and cultivators seeking certainty of outcomes when it comes to their facility development and operations.”

DAG is North America’s leading Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) firm for Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) facilities in the food and Cannabis industries. DAG is a division of Dominion Builders, a South Florida general contractor with more than 40 years of experience managing complex construction projects on a national scale. For more information email us at info@dominion-ag.com

 

Dominion AG Builds a High-Performance Facility for Camp Cannabis

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If you like feel-good stories this is one of them. CAMP Cannabis was founded by high school friends Susan Griffith and Jennifer McGuire. Both friends having a healthcare background with Susan selling pharmaceutical equipment and Jennifer a Registered Nurse. CAMP Cannabis was granted both a cannabis cultivation license and an infused product manufacturing license in Missouri and has assembled a dream team of industry professionals. They are currently developing phase one of their 100,000 square ft. cannabis cultivation and processing facility with Dominion AG at the helm of both Design & Construction. CAMP’s culture, business acumen, and attitude is inspiring. “It’s great to work with such wonderful, focused, and passionate people,” said Neil Hammack Executive Vice President of Dominion AG. Phase one of the Cannabis cultivation facility will be operational in December 2020. Check out their website at www.letsgo.camp.

Build your Facility for Scalability

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Those of us in the industry have run into a lot of this. Cultivators have experience on a much smaller scale and aren’t always thinking in terms of enterprise solutions that set up your cultivation business for success. 

To build your facility and your business it’s important to think about scalability and creating efficiencies. Here are some things to keep in mind when building your facility.

Start with Team Building and Team Management

This is your most important step. Combining cultivators with engineers, architects, equipment manufacturers, product managers, construction managers, and CEOs into a cohesive unit when building a facility is no easy task. 

Find Team Players

You may find brilliant and experienced people, but if they aren’t team players, you are in for an uphill battle to get your business running. It’s possible to find talented people that are also willing to work well with others, listen, and clearly communicate their positions and suggestions without going into a tailspin. 

Create a Project Structure

Communications need to be run with structure, weekly calls, and updates with progress reports, deadlines, and coordination. Cannabis facilities are complex. Technologies are changing, legalities are changing and the industry, while exciting, is in a constant state of flux. It’s most important to be good at execution during this growth period in the industry. Proving you can excel under these circumstances shows strength and leadership which builds confidence in your business for investors, employees, and customers. Create your management structure and follow it to a tee.  

Masterplan

Plan your facility in phases. Understand what your yield needs to be from the onset and create a 5-year projection. Understand the proper ratio of mother, clone, veg, flower rooms, and processing rooms. The layout and design of your facility should be planned to add on square footage without any business interruption or complex future planning. Proportion your phases so that your original base of operations can remain and if demand rises for your product you are ready to respond rapidly since it’s already built into your original plan. 

Spend Wisely

Preserving capital is essential for growing your business. With thorough planning, creating the right team, and starting with a well-functioning facility, your business will produce good products and run efficiently from the beginning. With efficiencies in place, you can focus on sales, marketing, and refining your product and your cannabis business will be primed for success. 

Todd Friedman tfriedman@dominion-ag.com is the Director of Business Strategy for DAG. DAG builds Controlled Environment Agriculture Facilities for Cannabis. 

DAG Controlled Environment Agriculture Facilities is a division of Dominion Builders  LLC copyright 2021