Innovative tool calculates sustainability risks

With the help of Sweco’s Twinfinity® service platform, Vasakronan is digitising its entire property portfolio and creating digital twins of around 170 properties. By gaining full control over all relevant data, operations and management can be optimised, the carbon footprint reduced and Vasakronan’s service offering made more flexible. This provides opportunities to work more resource-efficiently, which brings both environmental and economic benefits.

Twinfinity® is a platform Sweco developed to manage and visualize information in digital connected building models. The platform makes digital buildings available through APIs for various applications and services. By using the industry standard Real Estate Core to describe these buildings, Twinfinity populates, for example, systems such as ProptechOS with building representations that enable the combination of, for example, business data, operational data or sensor data with the digital building. By combining and visualising data from ProptechOS and Twinfinity, meaning and context are created.

From drawing-based to a digital model world

By linking real-time property data with business and management data in a 3D model, information can be analysed, processed, visualised and shared. All the data is visualised in a hub, becoming a single source of truth. This leads to fewer sources of error, reduced update costs and up-to-date and accurate building information for everyone in the organisation – at any time and on any digital device.

“For Vasakronan, moving from an analogue, drawing-based way of working to a digital model world is an important part of our development. In this way, we gain control over all relevant data in our buildings throughout their lifecycle. It allows us to continue to be relevant and to improve both in terms of sustainable solutions and in terms of creating the flexibility in our service offering that customers demand,” says Sören Sandell, Business Developer at Vasakronan.

Full control over data ensures optimised, resource-efficient and sustainable management

In the digital twin, different types of information are linked to the building model via IoT sensors for, for example, CO2, occupancy, room utilisation, temperature and airflow, which can be visualised both in real time and historically. By eventually linking the information to a larger context and integrating the smart city of which the property is a part, Vasakronan will be able to optimise its business and increase its knowledge of each property’s conditions and values.

“Getting control of its data means having accurate information about, for example, premises space. This provides security and added value when conducting due diligence prior to the purchase or sale of a property. And when you know which rooms are not being used and whether there is a heat leak somewhere, for example, you can optimise maintenance in the property, reduce the service intervals for cleaning in rooms that are not being used, or optimise rubbish collection on a floor where the bins are empty. It’s a smart way to save resources and energy, with benefits in both efficiency and sustainability,” says Fredrik Ahl, head of Sweco’s SimpleBuildings digital model concept.

Recycling inventory and rental information in the digital twin

In the twin, the circular economy can be planned through information on materials and components that can be reused. The twin can show exactly how many ceilings, doors and other items can be reused and where they are located. Climate impact can also be visualised with CO2 footprints, indoor climate and sustainability certification data.

Rental information can also be added to the model to facilitate the management of the premises, where leases can be linked directly to rental objects in the model, allowing clear visualisation of upcoming vacancies, vacant premises, turnover in shops and leased premises, and quick filtering by rent levels, income and the like.

“The digitalisation of our properties offers great opportunities for smarter use of resources, and we see great qualitative value in gaining control of our data. It costs a lot to manage poor quality, now we get good quality documents. We need this to be relevant, to be more sustainable and to be able to have good and flexible offers to our customers, who we know want modern and simple office solutions”, says Sören Sandell.

Working towards a common ecosystem in the industry

Sweco is responsible for the Twinfinity platform and management, the concept is developed in close cooperation with Vasakronan.

“We have a good and transparent collaboration with Sweco where we work closely together on the solution and have done pilots, testing and development together”, says Sören Sandell.

Vasakronan has technology development as an integral part of its entire business and works actively to contribute to a common and standardised ecosystem in the industry, where stakeholders and colleagues in other real estate companies share knowledge and experience and benefit from each other’s models and solutions.

“We want to make data open, usable and accessible, so that more people can benefit to some extent from the same information. Our customers should be able to make the best use of the premises. And partners such as Ragn-Sells and Securitas should be able to add information to our model from their respective perspectives,” says Sören Sandell.

A pioneering effort that will develop the entire industry and create a common, connected world of services and products that everyone can benefit from.