Changes in the environment, technological development and the market have driven a wave of digitalisation in the real estate industry in recent years. Hemsö is one of the large Swedish companies that has progressed the furthest on the journey with digital twins. By 2030, the company expects to save 50 kronor per square meter through new digital working methods and processes that are enabled.

"We have started to account for the value in various ways. This is something that will save money, both through increased efficiency and new revenues," says Fredrik Hörnsten, CDO at Hemsö and a driving force behind the company's digitalisation.

At an industry seminar held in Stockholm at the beginning of February, he was one of the digitalisation leaders invited to share insights from the work with digital twins. 

"This year we have established that the entire Swedish stock has a model within the platform. We own the models, we own the data, and we use the tool Vyer to visualise everything. This is an important milestone because when everything is in a system that can also retrieve data from our other systems, it becomes powerful for the entire company," explains Fredrik Hörnsten. 

A total of 226 of Hemsö's buildings have been digitised in the Vyer platform (1.3 million square metres) which is used by 436 employees in operations and management. 

The twins today give the organisation access to continuously updated A-drawings, increased knowledge about what exists in the buildings, the opportunity to access operation and maintenance instructions, better oversight of warranty periods and smoother planning of maintenance and performance of rounds.

During the autumn, Hemsö, together with the proptech company Vyer, began to account for real values from digital twins over time, which is included in the company's ROI forecast for 2030.

"For a long time, we have heard from operations technicians and managers that their productivity improves in various ways, but to calculate the value for individual property companies, it is necessary to collect data from operations. We have done that together with Hemsö," says Nils Berglund, CEO of Vyer.

Measurements of productivity in operations and management enable the calculation of time and cost savings, which are weighed against investment costs related to digitalisation.

"This is also linked to something called digital maturity. That is to say, the maturity in the company – and it is about us as people having to keep up for the investment to deliver as well as possible. It is very important to instil that mindset, which can be done both by pointing it out and through education, conversations, and inspiration," says Fredrik Hörnsten.

Key factors behind Hemsö's success with digital twins

• Choice of technology

  Usability and user-friendliness have been crucial in the choice of technology, focusing on how Hemsö can create value for its employees

• Early involvement

  Employees have been engaged in the digitalisation from the start with pilot projects that have driven engagement. 

• Internal communication

  Continuous knowledge sharing from management, operations technicians and managers to the business throughout the project's progress.

• Perceived benefits

  Operations and management have had the chance to experience, touch and discuss the benefits through pilot projects and feel that they gain value from the technology.

• Goals and vision

  Concrete objectives for individual systems combined with a holistic perspective provide a clear path forward.

• Strategic system integrations

  Specialised systems are linked together to maximise benefits and avoid duplicate work with updates. 

• Digital key roles and collaborations

  Internal forces drive digitalisation and coordinate information sharing between different departments and projects. Collaboration with specialised tech companies provides technical expertise. 

Change management: Pilot projects inspire employee engagement

The journey truly gained momentum when Fredrik Hörnsten stepped into Hemsö as digitalisation leader, a newly created role in the company, in the spring of 2020.

"I had worked with web development, app development, integrations, APIs, and more complex websites and web solutions, but not with property companies. Hemsö was looking for someone who could come in with a fresh perspective, which felt exciting," he recounts."

Together with Hemsö's team, he is now driving several digital projects that cooperate to create seamless information management from idea to management, including the initiative on digital twins with the proptech company Vyer.

"I remember thinking: “How is it possible for us as a property company not to have an archive with drawings where everything is collected?” But that was the case, so we started a project where we began to delve into this in collaboration with the supplier."

"We have involved all technicians in this way, focusing on value both from a management perspective and for the individual. For our investment to yield the desired effect, the perceived benefit must be greater than the effort for the individual person"

The project started as a pilot where employees in operations and management had the opportunity to start using the digital platform and provide feedback. With a greater understanding of how digital twins can contribute to value creation for the business, Hemsö then chose to scale up the initiative to the entire stock, region by region. 

"Change must occur by allowing people to experience and discuss. By taking step-by-step from a pilot where we first see that it actually works, we can engage people."

Since then, hundreds of properties have been digitalised and more teams have gradually been introduced to the tool and new digital work routines, both with help from digitalisation leaders and the employees who were early involved through the pilot. 

"We have involved all technicians in this way, focusing on value both from a management perspective and for the individual. For our investment to yield the desired effect, the perceived benefit must be greater than the effort for the individual person," says Fredrik Hörnsten, who from the start has emphasised the importance of user-friendliness and usability in the choice of technology. 

System integrations break down information silos and create new values

Part of the digitalisation work also involves breaking down silos, where a large number of systems from different suppliers run in parallel without communicating with each other.  At Hemsö, a strategic integration effort is underway where the digital twins become the hub in a larger ecosystem.

"My team of digitalisation leaders and strategists is looking at how we can bring these worlds together, along with our partners in the proptech scene," says Fredrik Hörnsten. 

The aim is both to avoid duplicate work during updates and to maximise the value of existing data by enabling use in multiple locations. 

'A prerequisite for property organisations to be able to work in many systems regularly without it becoming too time-consuming is that these are integrated with each other wherever they overlap. Then, employees only need to add and update data in one place for it to be available across multiple places," explains Lennart Liberg, software developer and API manager at Vyer. 

"This is a slow change; it takes a few years, but we are seeing more and more benefits appearing all the time. Dare to invest and aim for the long term."

So far, Hemsö's existing fault reporting system has been integrated with Vyer to enhance the ability to analyse recurring faults over time using spatial data from the digital twins. 

From another system, basic data on properties and rental objects is retrieved automatically – and in a third system, tests are currently underway to use the base data from the twins to create maintenance plans using AI. 

"The strength lies in the ecosystem where the spatial database, the geographical details of the twin, is tied together with harmonised data from other systems. This allows us to change how we work with operations, technical and economic management," says Fredrik Hörnsten.

"You won't get any quick wins overnight; it takes time. This is a slow change, it takes a few years, but we are seeing more and more benefits all the time. Dare to invest and aim for the long term, he concludes."