Heba's property technician: "With digital twins we manage knowledge and boost efficiency"

"Getting reminders about planned maintenance is going to make my work so much easier. The long-term vision is for the system to be able to tell us when something's wrong in our properties."

Fredrik Melander, property technician at Heba

Following a successful pilot project where Heba tested coordinating information in digital twins, the property owner chose to scale the initiative up across all its properties. Since last fall, drawings covering 290,000 square meters have been modernized and 3D models published in Vyer's web app.

Making maintenance planning and execution easier

Fredrik Melander, property technician at Heba, is one of the staff members responsible for driving the company's digitalization forward. Over the past six months, he's mapped a large number of components and work orders in the interactive maps, which will eventually help the organization run its work more efficiently. Among other things, he's added information to simplify replacing backup batteries in the access control systems.

"If there's a power outage in a property, it's those batteries that make sure tenants can still get through the doors and move around the building. Now I've mapped where the control panels are, where the backup batteries are, what type of battery it is, and when they need to be replaced in each property. So I get an email and a reminder in the app when it's time, and I can place an order instead of having to remember it myself and go through an Excel list."

Fredrik Melander, property technician at Heba

Digitalizing and sharing expertise

Staff have also mapped shelters, fire alarm control panels, fire alarms, sprinkler systems, water shut-offs, and the key tubes that Heba's staff, external contractors and on-call personnel use if they need to get into a property to, for example, shut off a leak.

"The technicians are hard at it, running around taking photos and uploading them."

Fredrik Melander, property technician at Heba

By gathering and sharing information that would otherwise be locked to individual staff members in a shared system, the organization becomes less vulnerable during vacation, illness, or staff turnover. It also reduces stress for the individual.

"When I or any of our technicians or property managers go home for the day, get sick or go on vacation, we take the knowledge of where everything is with us. That's the kind of information we carry in our heads that you want to have digitally available so someone else can easily take over."

Fredrik Melander, property technician at Heba

Virtual site visits — check information remotely

The digital transformation is about both making information easily accessible and changing ways of working. With digital twins, they can see the actual conditions in the buildings from a phone or a computer at the office, saving on car trips.

"We shouldn't have to dig through a thousand Excel sheets or binders to find where something is, when we can quickly and easily look it up in Vyer. We've already put it to use. When we had a water leak and the plumber wanted to know remotely what was in the apartment above, we could go in and see there was a kitchen and a bathroom right above, and understand that's where the water was coming from. That saves a huge amount of time, instead of him having to drive out and look, or hunt down some old drawing."

Fredrik Melander, property technician at Heba

The vision is for the system to be able to tell Heba's staff when something has broken. As part of that, they eventually want to start connecting sensor data, to also be able to see things like temperatures.

"If we notice, for example, that it's very cold in the entrance, we can see that it's the door automation that's acting up and that it's stuck open. We're aiming to be able to figure out what the fault is before we head out, so we can bring the right things with us right away."

Fredrik Melander, property technician at Heba