In collaboration with Findable, Stavanger Municipality has organized over 40,000 building code documents. The new system will save the municipality both time and money, according to Espen Svendsen, head and unit chief of the department for purpose-built buildings.
When Stavanger Municipality chose a new property management system, large amounts of unsorted building documentation had to be digitized. To streamline document management, the municipality partnered with us at Findable.
– Previously, much of the documentation was stored in a paper archive under the municipality's service center. We had over a thousand binders of documentation, in addition to documentation stored on CDs, USB drives, and various servers. We started with a common catalog structure with subject folders according to the building code standards, which consists of about 300 different categories. The catalog structure became very large, and many stored the same document in different places. This led to us spending a lot of time finding the right documentation, says Espen Svendsen, head of the department. He works with technical staff and advisors who assist with management, operation, and maintenance of the municipality's properties.
Stavanger Municipality has approximately 800 purpose-built buildings spread over 800,000 square meters. The municipal portfolio consists of schools, kindergartens, sports facilities, swimming pools, nursing homes, etc.
Espen explains that operational staff need everything from color codes to documentation on load calculations.
– Now that we are installing solar panels on the roofs, structural calculations become especially important. This documentation was not relevant before but is now necessary to know if the roof can bear the load. We also work a lot on changes of use and room expansions. Then, dimensions of channels become important to know how much we can increase the airflow. Without the necessary documentation, we have to hire consultants for inspections, visual checks, and new calculations. This naturally incurs significant costs.
This was the background for the procurement of a new facility management system and the collaboration with Findable.
– To address the challenges, we set up a procurement group for a new management system. We involved accounting, the IT department, and the operations department to conduct a public procurement process. Document management was one of the criteria that we needed a good solution for, and the FAMAC system came out on top overall, says Richard Roaldsøy, ITB coordinator at Stavanger Municipality.
After the tender, the municipality and Findable agreed on a collaboration and set up a pilot project for organizing documentation for 10 buildings. After the pilot project and a new public tender for a document sorting system, the municipality entered into a framework agreement with Findable.
– Now the service has access to unsorted documents, unpacks them, checks for duplication, and sorts them into the right place in the subject folders. It's hard to say how much time this has saved us, but with approximately 40,000 documents, it's a significant number of hours.
– Now that the documentation is sorted on each property, it's just a few keystrokes away, says Richard Roaldsøy, ITB coordinator and technical construction manager in Stavanger Municipality.
Lower Costs and Increased Quality
The next step is to establish routines for submission and sorting documents for new projects.
– Previously, we budgeted costs for contractors to manually input, sort, and label documentation. Now, documents can be submitted digitally and unsorted to Findable, which further sorts them into FAMAC. We also plan to develop standard requirements for facility management content and automatic control of submitted documents.
– Such sorting and control significantly reduce costs and improve quality in projects, says Roaldsøy.
The municipality's digital ambitions does not stop there; they now intend to use the sorted documentation to create digital twins of the buildings.
– Since the facility management documentation is now sorted and quality assured, we can link it to digital twins of the buildings. This allows operational staff to access documentation through smart glasses or tablets on-site. If you are looking at, or are near, a technical installation, you will receive maintenance instructions, technical drawings, and other documentation. Then you can also update maintenance history in real-time. It's about connecting systems to create new possibilities.
– Automatic sorting of submitted documentation and linking it to the digital twin is the future for us, says Roaldsøy.
The municipality is pleased with the collaboration and the results.
– Working with a newly established company with young and innovative people has been exciting. They have been responsive to our needs, good at identifying requirements, and have helped us with what we need. We had enormous amounts of documentation, so Findable was fortunate to have a lot of data to work with. We have also been involved in shaping the solutions along the way, which has been a valuable and enlightening process.
– Since Findable uses machine learning, we spent some time training the system. We set up meetings to review documentation that the system didn't understand and helped sort the documentation in the right place. This resulted in the automatic sorting getting better and better.
– Even though we are well underway, we still have a digital cleanup ahead of us. That job will be much easier now that the documentation is digitized and sorted, concludes Roaldsøy.
Fredrik H. Wisløff, co-founder, and CEO of Findable, says they have worked closely with the municipality to find the best solutions.
– Stavanger Municipality, like many other municipalities, has enormous amounts of building documentation and a significant cleanup ahead. For us, it immediately made sense to use artificial intelligence to replace the manual work of sorting documents. We have worked closely together since the pilot project to identify how our technology could be used in the project.
He talks about a learning collaboration that has provided important insights into how building documentation is handled.
– As a startup, we rely on customers like Stavanger Municipality. They have been willing to collaborate to solve fundamental problems and have provided important insights and feedback. Our product as it stands today is a result of this collaboration.
– The main reason we have document requirements is to ensure safe buildings, but documentation is also crucial for energy and climate measures, better maintenance, environmental certifications, and increased reuse. As a property owner, you depend on this "instruction manual" to operate buildings efficiently and sustainably.
We at Findable want to contribute tools for safer and more sustainable buildings, both for private property and other public actors, concludes Wisløff.