More and more property owners are investing in proptech to streamline their operations. Örebroporten Fastigheter started early on to implement digital twins for management through Vyer and has come a long way in terms of the digitalization of its holdings. Now, the property company's development leader shares insights and advice with actors who want to make the same journey.

"It’s a new world you step into, so it’s good to have thought about certain things from the beginning," says Jesper Hedlund.

It was late 2018. Örebroporten was once again on the lookout for a platform that would help them gather information about their properties in digital twins to streamline operations and management.

"Many people came into the office trying to sell various platforms for document management and model management, but they were often too complicated. We started early to think about who the end-user was and began to set demands on system providers to make it easy to get started," says Jesper Hedlund, development leader and BIM manager.

He was visiting Vasakronan's office when he ran into Nils Berglund, CEO of Vyer.

"I remember saying something like; 'Whoever can visualize a BIM model in a very simple way has a good chance.' Then a phone was sent across the table, and the Vyer platform landed there," Jesper recounts.

Need-based development

The meeting led to a collaboration where Vyer developed a 3D model of one of the property company's properties. The organization accessed it via the digital platform and started populating it with data that otherwise only existed in hard-to-reach systems or their own heads.

"We bounced a lot of ideas around and talked about various features that could be interesting for property owners to have. The advantage of a SaaS service is that it develops all the time and you get to be part of that development. It becomes a combination of what all customers want," says Jesper.

Today, digital twins of about twenty of Örebroporten's properties (70 percent of the rental space) are in the Vyer app. There, operations and management map building information, handle location-specific cases, and communicate with each other, as well as with tenants.

"First, it's exciting to be able to look at a property, then it accelerates, and suddenly you’re faced with very many buildings very quickly. All of a sudden, it’s digital management that you have to prepare for," says Jesper Hedlund.

Creating engagement within the organization

He refers, among other things, to the work of updating the information in the digital twins so that it always corresponds with reality, something that requires engagement from operations technicians and managers.

"I believe in finding ambassadors for this. You can highlight employees who are very skilled with Vyer in their role and let others learn from those individuals and mature into the technology. Getting many properties going means that all operational teams and managers can get started."

A fundamental requirement for a tool to be used to the extent required is that it is both user-friendly and creates value, argues Jesper Hedlund.

"When employees feel that it improves their everyday work and gives them and others the opportunity to succeed in their roles, they want to take responsibility and use it. With digital twins, operations technicians can also create conditions for more financially-minded managers to approach their daily work and help the on-call team resolve issues more quickly."

He also emphasizes the importance of clarifying the distribution of responsibilities and ensuring that employees feel support and acceptance from above to spend time on digital management.

"It’s up to the management level to agree and be able to point out who should perform this; it's a piece of advice I want to give to other property owners using Vyer."

The time each employee invests in maintaining the models is compensated in other ways, allowing the entire organization to ultimately perform its work more efficiently.

"It allows you to avoid getting in the car and driving out to various properties to look at things. Of course, there will be times when you need to be on-site and use your hands to fix something, but being able to sit at home and address fault reports, resolve them in a more overarching way, and quickly respond to tenants also increases customer satisfaction."

Must demand the ability to read in and out data from various systems

To reduce the need to work in too many systems and create a seamless flow of information, it is also important to ensure that suppliers can provide data in a way that makes it usable in other systems.

"With an increasing number of systems, work time accumulates, so you must agree on where the information should be and in which service it should be presented. It depends on both the suppliers' willingness to share data and their ability to do so; it’s a world they must prepare for, where we as property owners must start to demand."

Örebroporten is also working on refining everything related to control and real-time data in the property, to be able to reflect it in the Vyer models.

"We feel confident that we have a couple of properties soon where we can share a lot of data with Vyer that we can enrich the models with, so we get an even better picture of various conditions."

More opportunities with digital twins

Initially, the purpose of implementing digital twins at Örebroporten was primarily to get a digital representation of reality in the properties, but now Jesper Hedlund sees more opportunities.

"Digital twins give us the opportunity to look at reality as it is, but also to turn back time, as we can do today with case management, for example. You can see that this room or this equipment has many fault reports and ponder what it depends on. When real-time data comes in, it can also mean that you can then analyze historical data to see into the future and make adjustments based on that."

The digital twins should also help Örebroporten to better manage lease contracts and agreements and to handle rentals more smoothly. In addition, new business opportunities have emerged as tenants themselves want to use the twins in other contexts.

Among other things, they have been used as visitor maps at a food and wine fair in Conventum Arena, as well as in Kulturkvarteret to give the tenant Örebro Municipality an overview of where in the premises they have their inventory and equipment.

"It will be very exciting to see how we can use it at another level where you have a more permanent operation. For example, the organizer of the fair has requested to use the twin for inventorying conference equipment," says Jesper Hedlund.

He also sees value in getting better organization of all property data in preparation for future transactions.

"It’s quite messy to sort out how we hand over systems and which drawings and what information exists. It happens that buyers reach out several months later because they are missing various items; the same goes for us when we buy properties. All of that you can manage better with the twins."