Defence Administration supplied with the most extensive property maintenance software implementation in Finland

HUTO is a maintenance ERP system that covers the entire country. It is based on Granlund Manager.

The new HUTO system provides the Construction Establishment of the Defence Administration (CEDA) with an up-to-date overview of the servicing and maintenance of properties all over Finland.

Finland’s largest maintenance system

HUTO is a maintenance ERP system that covers the entire country. It is based on Granlund Manager.

”This is Finland’s largest maintenance system in terms of the number of sites,” says Tommi Rekola, Granlund Oy’s Senior Advisor on Facilities Management. ”CEDA is responsible for maintaining approximately 2.7 million square metres of facilities, around 6,000 buildings and about 7,900 contractual sites. CEDA serves a number of organisations, including various administrative units in the Defence Forces and Millog Ltd. The project has budgeted for 16 man-months of Granlund’s work but our collaboration will continue in the form of consulting and planning services after the software has been delivered. Granlund Manager’s features are continuously updated, which guarantees that the system develops rapidly in accordance with user needs. Updated versions of Manager are released 11 times per year. Within the company, we dedicate around 20,000 hours to R&D every year.”

The Defence Administration’s customer support centre provides 24/7 service

CEDA’s customer support centre steers and coordinates the building services on the Defence Forces’ properties with the help of building automation. The aim is to ensure energy efficiency and guarantee appropriate indoor conditions on the premises maintained by CEDA. The customer support centre handles more than 400 fault reports and service requests every week.

”We wanted to provide our customers with better service, make their lives easier and coordinate servicing and maintenance centrally,” says Ari-Pekka Laxén, the manager of CEDA’s service centre project and the Director of Real Estate Maintenance for the Defence Administration. ”The old RYHTI system did not meet our present requirements and was not able to adapt to handling service requests in the manner we desired, whereas HUTO supports CEDA’s new service centre operating model. The system overhaul has also provided senior management with a better overview of the status of service requests. Reporting has also become more efficient.”

Mobile user interface reduces service request response times

A mobile user interface was one of the HUTO project’s main objectives. Service requests sent to the system are automatically sent to the maintenance personnel’s smartphones and tablets.

”We went through the features of the mobile user interface with the customer during the design phase and we received some development ideas after the first user trials,” says Granlund’s Tommi Rekola. ”For the mobile interface, ease of use is a key factor, and the best development ideas arise from the customer’s user experience. At CEDA’s request, we added a feature that enables real estate managers to assign support requests to a specialist, such as an HVAC fitter or an electrician.”

The maintenance personnel can view their own tasks on the system, which boosts the efficiency of planning maintenance rounds and prioritising work. Paper-based task lists are no longer needed.

”Jobs are marked as done on-site and supervisors always have access to a real-time overview of the situation,” Rekola states. ”In addition, the person who sent the service request receives an email notification that the job has been received, an estimate of when the repair will be done and a message when the job is complete. This helps to reduce the number of phone calls to chase things up and decreases the response time for jobs.”

”During the competitive tendering phase, we prepared precise specifications to ensure that we only received high-quality tenders. The procurement was based on a competitive negotiated procedure whereby suppliers were selected for involvement in the competitive tendering process if they could provide references of sufficiently demanding system implementations. Granlund was selected to supply the system based on favourable overall costs. Switching from an old system to a new one is a massive project and it was a major benefit to us that Granlund had someone involved – Tommi Rekola – who was familiar with our old RYHTI system, as well as CEDA’s needs and operating methods, particularly in relation to security.”
– Ari-Pekka Laxén, manager of CEDA’s service centre project and Director of Real Estate Maintenance for the Defence Administration

”CEDA is a major customer for us in every respect. The HUTO project is a continuation of a long partnership that began in the 1990s. CEDA is a national organisation and Granlund’s service network covers almost all of Finland. Granlund’s offices in Helsinki, Kuopio and Joensuu were involved in this project. We have also supplied an equivalent system to Finavia and Senate Properties.”
– Hannu Tuovinen, Granlund Oy’s Sales Director, Facilities Management