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No matter where you are — a healthcare facility, tech complex, college campus, ballpark, stadium, city, state or county — almost 70% of the commercial buildings in the U.S. still store their building plans and O&M information in paper format. The rest have digitized the plans simply to save space. No matter how you look at it, the information is still locked up in documents.
Worse, most of it is trapped in paper.
Here is a simple fact — whether you are in the middle of a routine maintenance call or a life-threatening emergency and want to find the shutoff for gas, water or electricity — a great deal of time is used up just getting to that drawing.
If you are in a small building that would be one thing, but if you are on a college campus, industrial complex, school district, or a large region then you have to travel to the central repository first to find the drawing. That alone can take 10, 20, 30 minutes or more. Meanwhile the losses due to the failure or accident keep mounting! Statistics show technicians spend an average of 2 to 3 hours searching for information in large campuses and commercial complexes.
Here is another element which is often overlooked: In the document storage repository, building documents are lumped together making access even more difficult. It doesn’t matter whether you are looking for current building information for maintenance, historical information for retrofits, or emergency and life safety information, you’re going to be challenged to find exactly what you need quickly. What if these documents were precisely organized and indexed so they can be accessed for specific needs?
The wait is over. Using AI and advanced optical character recognition technologies we can now access the exact documents for specific needs. On demand. This is a game changer for facilities professionals in the field. More importantly, using some of the latest UI and UX technologies this information can be delivered through simple apps “on the go.”
Let’s say one of your technicians is on a ladder peering into the ceiling looking at an air handler which has failed. He needs to know whether this unit is under warranty, when it was last inspected, the serial number, and the details of the servicing dealer. Let’s think about what happens next: He must get off the ladder and walk back to his desk. If he is on a different part of the campus, he may have to drive back.
Well, what if he can use his mobile to scan the QR code on the air handler and have all that information within seconds while he is up there? He can simply tap on the phone number and give the serial number to the servicing dealer who will likely set up a service call immediately. This entire exercise may take 3 to 4 minutes compared to 20 minutes… 30 minutes… or even an hour?
With a to-do list that keeps facility teams constantly in motion, any wasted movement is a loss. You’ll never get that time back. Instead, consider how instant access to building information can transform the way facilities professionals function on a daily basis!
