Estates Managment

[Paul]

I’m just wondering if anyone has any examples of good estates management tools/systems which are not one of the big firms, Trimble, MRI... to name 2 off of the top of my head.

Are there any small to medium sized options/vendors which cover rent/payments in & out, deeds/responsibilities, IRF16, areas, blocks, sites, etc., etc.?

Or is it, buy big or do it yourself?

[Tom Hughes]

I'm sure other members of the community will have further examples, but if you haven't already seen it you might want to look at the University of Coventry case study that was published by @Hadeel Saadoon. The case study may not cover everything that you are looking for but it does document experiences of implementing a digital twins from an estates perspective.     

[Paul]

Thank you Tom.  It' proving to be a bit of a sticking point for us.  A lot of the focus tends to be about building and assest within during delivery but we would like to ust know what we're responsible for first.  I'll check out the case study.

[Andy Parnell-Hopkinson]

Paul, in my limited experience there are many, many suppliers of point tools for doing parts of asset capture and management but I'm yet to see a genuine one-stop-shop solution. Besides, your requirements are unlikely to be precisely the same as the next asset owner, meaning either compromise or customisation.

If you already have parts of the solution and need to fill the gaps and close the loop there are also, ahem, some excellent service providers out there who can help... 🙂

[Paul]

Thank you Andy,  I think you've summised my frustration rather well.  We're not as unique as one might think; if you think about doc control and project management software and the uniqueness they have to manage but still manage to be flexible or we find there is a strong range of offerings.  There are a lot of mid sized companies who need something, not just retailers, and the core of what we all do is very similar but we all have to compromise and customise because we're not the big fish.

However, together we are quite a big fish and that's part of my point.  If we are seen on mass there is value here, it's just the initial uplift required by a company to make it worth while going after.

If / when we go to tender I'm sure we will make everyone aware.

[Guest]

Hi Paul, we have been exploring the same for some time - our tender spec has similarly been drafted and going through a protracted review to look beyond estate only considerations. Happy to have an offline conversation to compare notes if of interest. 

 

[Shelbyrgreen]

On 26/01/2021 at 18:06, Paul said:

 

Hi Paul, Graham,

There's some great work being done by developers using Autodesk Forge APIs to create bespoke platforms. Might be worth taking a look - https://forge.autodesk.com/customers

I have been doing a lot of research surrounding asset management & digital twins having worked both within traditional FM & the delivery of BIM. 

Let me know if I can be of any assistance.

[Paul]

Thank you Shelby, we're no longer AutoDesk relient and have our own in house CAD system however our stakehoders are but for us we're more intersted in the Data in a model.

 

For this thread my main concern is also Estates Management, rent, motgages, occupancy, IRF16 etc.  It's dominated by big companies and I'm wondering if there are smaller SME's working in this are.

[Andy Parnell-Hopkinson]

@Paul Forge is just a data/API platform, it's not tied to Autodesk-only products. Depending on the data or services you access might require a licence of some sort, but it's worth a look, maybe, as long as you don't mind subscriptions.

If you want to tie all your business and spatial data together ad aren't averse to an in-house solution there are worse places to start, but it's not the only choice.

[Nigel@CLA]

Hi Paul

I know a small IT group near London who I was going to help them with the building of a platform for a mixed use property portfolio which was going to involve the LiDAR scanning and matterporte models for all the buildings and then look at building out the modules to onto this.   I had a similar idea to what you mentioned 'many years' ago when I was doing a lot of due diligence for a large US group acquiring buildings - propTech was not a term then....my regret I never followed through!   If you are interested in having a discussion drop me a note and I can hook you up with them.  (nigel.austin@cloverleafadvisory.com)

If you have alot of spatial data from different sources this organisation SightPower has a platform that is capable of doing this.  They currently do it in the mining sector but adaptable to the built environment.  See the pdf attached as an example of can be done.

2103 - SightPower - Digital Mining Capability - Final - R0b - For DT Paul.pdf

[Henry Fenby-Taylor]

I was curious about the answer to this so I did some digging.  The UK gov digital marketplace does seem to have some interesting leads

I tried some searches: 

https://www.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk/g-cloud/search?q=facilities management

https://www.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk/g-cloud/search?q=estates management&resellingType=not_reseller

It seems there are quite a lot of solutions out there, adding the 'not reseller' filter created an interesting snapshot.

My view is that there are consultants out there who have seemingly developed software that is utilised as part of their service, there are some niche pieces of software and quite a number of people offering configuration of the larger solutions you mentioned at the start.

Personally I stopped looking after page 2!

 

[Paul]

Thanks for taking the time to look into this Henry, it's something we have had to put on hold for now due to the major HO restructure but once we come out of the other side of it all I know this one will be back on my plate to look into.

Also and nfortunatley we are not allowed to work with consultants anymore but we can configure software, not customise, so there is hope but I'd still rather not have to configure a big beast (who's are geared up for landlords not tennants or us as and other retailers who are a mix of both) where we are only benifiting from 40% of the offering to kind of do what I want; I'd rather work with a smaller firm that can give and recived rent to get 80% of the way to what I need out of the box and then worktogether on the final 20%.

It's the smaller firms I can't find, or for that matter someone who is promoting and assisting SME's in digital construction, is there anyone giving the SME's a leg up?

[Henry Fenby-Taylor]

We have a memorandum of understanding with Tech UK who represent the sector. https://www.techuk.org/ . They represent the large firms, but the smaller ones as well. I'd be happy to organise an introduction.

[Paul]

That would be very helpful, cheers