Blog: Credit to functional technical building services

Digitalisation has affected the construction and maintenance of properties, even if the effect has not been as radical as in many other fields – at least not yet.

Properties that are designed according to customer needs, contracted with expertise and maintained correctly do exist. I just wish there were more of them. Unfortunately, the bad reputation of the technical building services industry has also become concrete at the hundreds of site visits we have concluded. Property users suffer from poor indoor environments when the implementation chain is not working.

We are not rainmakers in these matters, and we are not misleading anyone to believe that we are.However, we intend to realise services that will make properties first work according to plans and even better after that, utilising digitalisation.

Digitalisation has affected the transformation and development of many businesses. It has not only increased the efficiency of working but also improved the service the customer receives. In the best scenario, digitalisation has contributed to the creation of new and meaningful services, such as AirBnB and Uber, which have genuinely transformed their industries.

Digitalisation has also affected the construction and maintenance of properties, even if the effect has not been as radical as in many other fields – at least not yet. Technology enabling the transformation is entering the industry at a quickening pace. Data model based design has become part of everyday work, as well as solutions related to the supervision and monitoring of work. Measurability as well as collecting and transferring data using IoT solutions and platforms have developed significantly. Communication between systems and platforms has become easier.

The foundation of Granlund’s new digital property services is our strong expertise in technical building services and our analysis tools combined with a group of start-up players and a network of professional service providers. Our services require almost no investments at all as they fund themselves with the accumulated savings.

To improve the use of properties’ technical building services, we utilise analytics on which we have built a professional service centre. This combination of technology and expertise allows us to identify usage errors and system errors in automation. Customer benefits are gained when bugs in technical building services are identified sooner, which makes it possible to react to them faster.

Our services will make the technical maintenance of properties more appropriate by increasing the use of analytics and IoT. Currently, there are many properties with too little maintenance, which lowers the property value significantly and causes issues for the users. At the same time, there are also properties with maintenance programmes based on a one size fits all method. This means that the maintenance is calendar-based and does not take into account the property’s phase in its life cycle. Under or over resourcing maintenance is not profitable for the owner.

We are compiling a network of service providers that can produce the maintenance of the technical building services of our customers’ properties using rules, tools and procedures agreed upon together. In the operations, we use applications created by start-ups to define, implement and document the gigs.

We believe that the time is right. Recent technological development enables a new kind of business. When the toughest experts of technical building services start using the latest technology, it will be possible to create completely new kinds of services for properties’ technical building services. We are eager to prove that well-functioning technical building services are not only possible, but also extremely useful.

The writer Teemu Hausen is the Business Director of Digital Real Estate Services.