Örebroporten: how to prepare for digital facility management

More and more property owners are investing in proptech to streamline their operations. Örebroporten Fastigheter was an early adopter of digital twins for facility management through Vyer and has come a long way in digitalising its portfolio. The company's development manager shares insights and advice for those considering the same journey.

"It's a new world you're stepping into — so it's good to have thought through certain things from the start," says Jesper Hedlund.

It was late 2018. Örebroporten had been searching for a platform to help them collect information about their properties in digital twins, to streamline operations and facility management.

"A lot of people came into the office trying to sell various platforms for document and model management, but they were often too complicated. We started thinking early about who the end user was, and began setting counter-requirements on system suppliers to make it easy to get started," says Jesper Hedlund, development manager and BIM lead.

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

"I remember saying something like: 'Whoever can visualise a BIM model in a really simple way is in a strong position.' Then a phone was slid across the table, and the Vyer platform landed in front of me," Jesper recalls.

Need-driven development

The meeting led to a collaboration in which Vyer built a 3D model of one of the property company's buildings. The organisation gained access to it through the digital platform and began populating it with data that had previously existed only in hard-to-reach systems or in people's heads.

"We exchanged a lot of ideas and talked about different features that could be interesting for property owners. The advantage of a SaaS service is that it keeps developing, and that you get to be part of that development — it becomes a combination of what all customers want," says Jesper.

Today, digital twins of around twenty of Örebroporten's properties — covering 70 percent of the lettable area — exist in the Vyer app. Operations and facility management staff use them to map building information, handle location-specific work orders, and communicate with each other as well as tenants.

"At first it's exciting to be able to look at a property — and then suddenly you have a very large number of buildings very quickly. All of a sudden you have a digital facility management operation that you need to be prepared for," says Jesper Hedlund.

Building engagement across the organisation

Getting the whole organisation on board is one of the most important success factors, according to Jesper. His advice is to involve operations staff early, make the platform easy to use from day one, and demonstrate value quickly so that sceptics become champions.

"The technicians are the ones who know where everything is. If you can get them to add that knowledge to the system, the whole organisation benefits. And once they see how it helps them in their own work, they want to keep using it."