Alecta Fastigheter invests in efficiency through digital twins – how they work with external operations contractors to consolidate data

From left: Mattias Bergström, Head of Technical Development and Security at Alecta Fastigheter. A digital twin for data consolidation in the proptech company Vyer’s platform. Joel Forsberg, operations technician at Retta. Photos: Alecta Fastigheter / Vyer

Alecta Fastigheter is investing in consolidating data in digital twins in order to enable better analysis and data-driven decisions about its properties. To make data from the physical buildings available, the company works together with external operations contractors, who are also given the opportunity to use the tool to make their own work more efficient.

“We use the twins for our systematic fire safety management. It saves time, and you can genuinely feel confident that you have checked everything,” says Joel Forsberg, operations technician at Retta.

Better oversight and control, as well as efficiency gains and cost savings, are among the main drivers for property owners investing in digitalisation.

“By taking control of our data and making it available, so that everyone in the organisation can see how our properties are doing and performing, we can anticipate problems in the buildings at an early stage and put the right measures in place to bring costs down and, in the long term, create a better customer experience for our tenants,” says Mattias Bergström, Head of Technical Development and Security at Alecta Fastigheter.

Among other initiatives, Alecta Fastigheter is running a project in which digital twins are built in the proptech company Vyer’s platform, with the aim of gaining a real-time overview of the properties that supports analysis and decision-making.

“We chose Vyer because it is the best fit for where we stand today. It is easy to work with and it doesn’t lock the data in. There is also a responsiveness towards us as a property owner when it comes to adapting and developing the platform,” says Mattias Bergström.

He emphasises that a prerequisite for working in a data-driven way is that the information collected in different systems can be made available and used freely across systems and services.

“Our goal is to become a leader in digitalisation in the property industry. The fact that we own our data is enormously important. One advantage of being a relatively young company is that we have been able to start from scratch – we are not locked into a lot of systems, but can choose the ones that are most suitable, have good APIs and are easy to integrate with from the outset.”

Working with external operations contractors to centralise data

Digital twins make it possible to map and visualise management-critical information in digital drawings, including the adjoining outdoor environments.

Fixed geometries, structures and components are drawn up from BIM models, while dynamic data on spaces, technical equipment, processes and routines is drawn from integrated systems, as well as through ongoing mapping and updating by staff in the organisation.

Since Alecta Fastigheter contracts out property operations to external providers, it is also important to establish cooperation with those companies around digitalisation and the centralisation of data, he says.

“We work with several operations companies, and their solutions are more or less difficult to integrate with. Today it is enough that we can extract data from the systems, but I also think suppliers with their own systems have a journey ahead of them in adapting to property companies’ digitalisation.”

Retta is one of the companies that, in connection with the introduction of digital twins at Alecta, was asked to use the tool in its management assignment.

“It is very important for us to bring them along on the digitalisation journey. Retta working in a more digital way is an advantage in making as much data about the property available as possible,” says Mattias Bergström.

Greater control and confidence in fire safety work

As an external service provider, Retta is responsible for inspection and servicing, corrective maintenance, operational optimisation, and preventive and statutory rounds in its clients’ properties.

“We work a great deal with inspection rounds, so it adds up to quite a few checks over a year. We do rounds of our plant rooms once a week, go through the common areas, and carry out sprinkler and systematic fire safety (SBA) checks, among other things,” says Joel Forsberg, operations technician at Retta.

For Retta, the focus has been on surveying and mapping technical installations and fire safety components, and on planning and carrying out SBA rounds with the support of the twins.

“We haven’t had any dedicated software for systematic fire safety management or component inventories in these properties before. It is very easy to miss things without a checklist, so that is the biggest difference.”

In Vyer’s platform, the management team can now follow a checklist of inspection points for systematic fire safety management while seeing where those points sit in the property’s digital twin.

“It saves time, and you can genuinely feel confident that you have checked everything. Anyone can easily see what needs doing with the map on their phone, which also makes it easier to cover for colleagues if someone is off sick,” says Joel Forsberg.