Vyer
This week we have another guest writer: Niels Stevens!
To maintain a building nowadays it’s nearly impossible to keep track of all of the documents and problems in a building in a structured manner. There are also a lot of different parties involved like tenants, technicians, architects, and building owners.
All of this information can pile up so it can be quite a hassle to keep track of it all. There are multiple companies that try to make the maintenance of buildings more manageable and Vyer is one of them. They developed a digital tool where you can find all of the information, documents, and notifications about one building all in one place.
👽 What?
Vyer provides an online tool that can be used by different types of users per building. In this tool, you can easily find documents like maintenance contracts, certificates, inspection documents as well as issues, notifications, and planned activities.
Central to the Vyer solutions is a digital 3D model of your building. This model can be based on your BIM-model, or they can create a digital model for your building based on the building plans.
Technicians can simply open the online tool, type in the problem, and see all of the information they need without any hassle.
Information provided by the tenants is also an important gateway into knowing what’s going on in a building. Tenants can use Vyer to signal defects like e.g. lightbulbs that need changing. This notification is then visible for other tenants, that way communication to the building landlord gets streamlined and repeated messages avoided
imagery courtesy Vyer
👍 Why
Building information can sometimes be scattered all over the place, especially when dealing with a larger building that gets serviced by numerous technicians. Vyer makes this easy by putting all of the information in one online space.
This tool makes a technician’s job more efficient because he can focus on fixing the problem instead of trying to locate certain documents or locating the problem.
Tenants who use the app can easily contribute by reporting problems in a building and they can follow up on the development of the problem.
For building owners, this tool can save quite some time and money because they can filter the notifications and send them to the person responsible for fixing each specific problem. There is also no need for them to physically go to the building because they can consult all the relevant info from the digital tool.
Vyer can also register sensor data, by using this data you can simply analyze where there are weak points in a building. This way you can keep track of heat losses, water leaks, high/low moisture contents in rooms, etc.
👎 Why not?
As with most facility management tools, Vyer will only provide sufficient ROI when all stakeholders are adequately motivated to use the tool so it can become the single source of truth for the building. The building owner should require technicians and tenants to use the tool. The use of alternative ways of communication in addition to Vyer leads to inefficiencies and additional administration.
The tenants will play a big role in signaling issues, however, they might make inaccurate or misleading claims via the app that in turn get propagated by other tenants. This transparency might work against an owner that isn’t 100% dedicated to the maintenance of the building.
🤷 Who?
Vyer is a Swedish company founded by Nils Berglund and Conrad Wahlén in 2016. Both of them are responsible for customer management and front-end development as CEO and CTO. They are now operating with a team of 9 people, all with a background in either architecture, physics, communication, or 3D graphics.
🕵️♀️ Who else?
There are countless software tools trying to make building maintenance more manageable. We will try to focus on the specific combination of using a digital representation of the building to store location-aware documentation.
EyeOT3D offers a 3D Building Management System that integrates with your BMS.
Another option based on BIM is SpinalTwin, its maintenance book feature allows for documenting all maintenance actions.
Spacewell offers an actionable FM BIM integration where you can add tickets directly to the BIM model.
Haltian tries to make buildings more empathic and allows its user to report technical issues on a map of the building to register issues tied to a specific location.
📚 Further reading?
How 3D scanning is used for asset and facility management
✨ Things happening
Robots are coming in all forms to take over construction jobs… Proptech stated as one of the emerging sectors applying digital technologies… We are planning to shake some things up here at proptechaweek. We’ll keep you posted…