Hemsö: digital mapping of outdoor environments

Hemsö continues to develop its digital copy of the property portfolio, which now covers both buildings and outdoor environments. We spoke with Anna Ågren, digitalisation manager, and Anders Lahti, technology developer, to better understand how digital mapping of outdoor environments enables better planning and maintenance at the property company.

There are many benefits to having the outdoor environments mapped in the digital twin, both for facility management and for us as a company.
— Anders Lahti, technology developer, Hemsö

To date, a total of 261 of Hemsö's buildings have been digitalised in Vyer's platform — approximately 1.3 million square metres — used today by more than 450 staff in operations and facility management. The team is currently focused, among other things, on developing the digital copies by mapping outdoor spaces in the properties, to simplify the care and maintenance of outdoor environments.

It has been a wish from facility management for a long time. In some regions we have drone images that can be converted so that the outdoor spaces come directly into the digital twin. What we are missing we can then mark out ourselves in Vyer.
— Anna Ågren, digitalisation manager, Hemsö

Precision in procurement and maintenance

Mapping outdoor environments is more than just a visual overview. It gives property owners and managers precise figures and details about the spaces that make procurement and planning easier.

It is important for us to be able to see square metrage in order to get more accurate pricing when procuring a new contractor for outdoor environments. We also want to know how much surface area of different materials there is, because they require different types of maintenance.
— Anna Ågren

Knowing exactly how many square metres of hard surface or grass area there is will minimise costs in operational procurement for outdoor environments. Procurements are expensive for facility management teams to carry out, so having these supporting documents with square metrage and surface types simplifies the dialogue enormously and saves time and money.
— Anders Lahti

Another practical benefit is the ability to quickly update snow clearance maps.

With the digital twin we can quickly update where we have different surfaces and give clear instructions to those who will be clearing snow. That saves both time and resources.
— Anders Lahti

Integration with maintenance systems

Hemsö is also actively working to integrate the data collected in Vyer's platform with other systems to extract maximum value.

It is extremely important that we have control over these digital twins in the future. Vyer becomes our central repository for drawings, components and surfaces — and we will also use that data in other programmes and systems in different ways.
— Anders Lahti

Among other things, the information is being connected to a specialist maintenance system with the aim of enabling more precise calculations for future maintenance at Hemsö.

We get better supporting material for maintenance planning when we know exactly what is there and can set a timeframe and a cost for work to be carried out. If we know, for example, how large an asphalt surface is, we can easily calculate what it will cost to relay it in ten years.
— Anna Ågren

The big win for us as a company is that we will become data-driven. We will be able to analyse data in our data lake in a completely different way and make good decisions based on the right data.
— Anders Lahti