As FMs are beginning to make a greater contribution to the management of the entire enterprise through the gathering and interpretation of key estate management data, their needs are also changing. So say the initiators of the recent merger between software development companies Integrated fm and ARK e-management. In an exclusive interview, Steve Dingley of Integrated fm and former ARK directors Lionel Prodgers and Professor Matthew Bacon spoke to PFM about the key drivers behind this venture.
“As the business needs of FMs change, they need new technologies to help them work more productively and make better use of the knowledge at their disposal,” Dingley explains. “In particular, they need better ways of harvesting all of the operational information that is available to them through their CAFM software and bringing it together in a meaningful way,” he adds.
This, they say, is where the ARK side comes in. “At a senior management level, FMs now have more sophisticated requirements and a need for systems that will give them an enterprise perspective for strategic management,” suggests Prodgers. “Beyond this, there is a real need to organise information so it reflects the entire life cycle of the building, from initial planning through to day-to-day FM,” he asserts.
To that end, the newly expanded Integrated fm is introducing tools to its suite of CAFM products that will enable full integration with the ARK FM solutions software, enabling them to share information. The plan is that the operational data that is gathered in CAFM systems on a daily basis can then be quickly and easily assimilated. Once assimilated, it can then be ‘sliced and diced’ in ways to suit different reporting needs – along with information from other systems in the organisation.
In practice, this means the information from its various sources and in its diverse formats has to be brought together in a common format - and achieving this commonality is no mean feat. “Most of the information available at an operational level cannot be used in that form by existing enterprise systems. And bringing it all together can take many hours of staff time in manually converting the various formats,” Bacon explains.
In contrast, the ARK system is based on common formats such as XML and Java and is able to automatically convert information from a wide range of other formats to these common denominators, in real time. The idea being that the information is then available to managers as and when they need it without the need for manual processing and the inevitable time delays this brings.
“The key thing that makes our process different from other enterprise management software is that it uses vendor-neutral technologies that can be used with any systems. So compatibility between different types of software and operating systems is no longer an issue. This is true ‘interoperability’ that makes all of the knowledge within an organisation readily accessible and easy to assimilate,” Prodgers enthuses.
“At the heart of this initiative is the need to take these high level technologies, which already exist, and turn them into very practical solutions for FMs,” Dingley adds. “FMs are now inundated with information but it can be very difficult and time-consuming to turn that information into useful knowledge. That’s where we come in.”
At the same time, the application of such technologies has the potential to make the information about the estate richer and more meaningful, gaining a better understanding of the whole life cycle of the buildings and their contents.
“At the moment much of the information relating to the building, and very pertinent to its smooth running, is lost by the time the building is handed over to the owner,” Bacon notes. “This is because the information used by different parties involved in planning, design, procurement, construction and FM is stored in different data sets linked to different types of software so it is difficult to share easily. For example, the CAD information provides a view of the material properties of the building in a visual format, while information about maintenance, operating instructions and SLAs may be stored in word processing or spreadsheet documents.
“What our system does is enable these different types of information to be interconnected and stored together. For instance, a CAD file could tell you a lot about the structure of a teacup but it can’t tell you about other properties, such as the temperature of the tea inside. Adding ‘softer’ properties to the physical data makes the information more meaningful and more useful,” he suggests.
Armed with this richer information FMs should be able to do many more things that, currently, they simply don’t have the time for because of the data processing required. “We are already seeing a demand from FMs for the ability to carry out ‘exception reporting’ rather than reporting on every aspect of their operations,” says Dingley.
“Exception reporting enables them to take a view of processes across the management portfolio at a high level, with alerts to indicate any problem areas or non-compliance with SLAs. They are then able to focus on areas that require a more detailed analysis and make better use of their time and expertise. While this ‘digital dashboard’ approach is already available for information from our own fm facts products, the new systems will be able to provide the same functionality across the entire enterprise,” he continues.
In addition, FMs should be able to do more with the information than is currently possible. For example, where a new facility is being planned information from room usage in an existing building can be used to simulate projected usage in the new building. This knowledge can then be used to fine-tune the design of the new building.
Furthermore, all of the information for running the facility will be readily available to anyone with the authority to access it. “Currently, it’s quite common that when a key individual leaves an organisation much of the knowledge about the building goes with them. The new incumbent is then faced with the mammoth task of ‘re-discovering’ it all out again. With all of the information fully documented and inter-linked this will no longer be a problem,” Bacon suggests.
Development of the new systems is already well under way, starting with Integrated fm’s own technical support department. “We use our help desk product to manage the technical support service so this seemed an ideal place to start. It used to take five person-days to assimilate the information in a way that would enable us to analyse our performance and highlight any trends. This can now be done in real time so we are able to monitor the service more closely and this has helped us to accelerate our programme of continuous improvement,” Dingley explains.
The three are at pains to emphasise that “One size does not fit all”. Every organisation has different needs and different internal systems. Designed on generic system architecture, each customer solution can be configured to the needs of each organisation and implemented to give them maximum advantage,” Bacon points out.
While users will be able to install the software on their own servers, Integrated fm anticipates that many will migrate to an ASP (Application Service Provider) arrangement. With ASP, all of the software and data is hosted on remote, secure servers and accessed through standard web browsers.
“ASP offers many advantages to FMs over traditional hosted solutions and we believe this will be an area of rapid growth, particularly with the development of much faster internet access and the development of ‘superhighways’,” explains Prodgers. “This was a key factor in our two organisations coming together. The three of us were already acquainted through our activities in the BIFM and other areas of the FM industry and were confident there was a good cultural fit. However, Integrated fm’s technical expertise and the fact they are the only CAFM company already offering a true ASP solution were definite bonuses,” he concludes.
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