Full data control: Insel Gruppe AG opts for the BIM2FM platform from bbv

With over 10,000 employees and several sites in the canton of Bern, Insel Gruppe AG is the largest and leading healthcare system in Switzerland. For healthcare providers, providing care to patients is heavily dependent upon the cost-efficiency of the hospitals: technology, infrastructure, maintenance and energy costs are critical factors in the smooth operation of a hospital, in addition to patient care, fire safety and increased hygiene requirements.

Using BIM (building information modelling) gives hospitals the utmost transparency regarding such building data. For this reason, Insel Gruppe AG used BIM for the construction of Anna-Seiler-Haus, the new main building of the Insel Gruppe hospital (Inselspital).

For timely operational planning and the fastest possible commissioning of the building, the digitally recorded building data should be made available in advance to facility management (CAFM operations management tool) – keyword BIM2FM.

Quality control and data integration used to be performed manually and were extremely time-consuming and resource-intensive, as well as error-prone. “The different systems used by construction companies and specialist planners generate vast amounts of data that are not all important for facility management or must first be processed further before they can be transferred to the target system”, says Christian Gavesi, project manager at bbv.

“Having high-quality data and making it available to facility management in a timely manner and in the necessary format is one of the biggest challenges”.

Insel Gruppe AG looked to bbv for a solution, which took the form of the Swiss LCDM Hub: a data control centre that simplifies the transfer of BIM data to the target system with import rules, mapping catalogues and conversion options. The solution requires little technical know-how, making it accessible for business users too.

“bbv grasped our problem and developed a holistic solution that quickly generated added value. Implementation and collaboration were impressive at all levels”.

Steve Weissbaum, Head of Strategic Property and Operations Management
Property and Operations, Insel Gruppe AG

Prototype after one month

After just one month, bbv presented its first draft solution comprising two IT systems that exchanged data via a BIM data hub. bbv then used this to develop a minimum viable product (MVP) for the exchange of room data.

“Room categorisation is elementary for all building operations”, says Christian Gavesi. “For a bank, the high-security wing must be recorded as such; for a hospital, it is about having the highest standards of hygiene in the operating theatres. This information must therefore be clearly replicated in facility management systems or other target systems”.

bbv ultimately developed the MVP further into the Swiss LCDM Hub used by Insel Gruppe AG today. Thanks to configurable middleware and flexible, adaptive interfaces, users can import room and facility data effortlessly on an agile basis in several iterations in the quality control centre.

The quality control centre visually represents the entire data preparation process – from obligatory fields through to specific catalogue values. All transformations and quality rules are verifiable and can be released via individual or mass update functionalities for transfer to the target system. This quickly makes clear which data from the source system has already been correctly collected in the target system and which has not.

Immediate benefits

The added value of the pilot solution was immediately visible and noticeable for Insel Gruppe AG: “The fact that the data from construction companies and specialist planners had already been transferred to the facility management system thanks to the Swiss LCDM Hub was one of the reasons why the new main building was able to open so soon after construction”, explains Christian Gavesi.

The rapid availability of all relevant building data also has advantages for facility maintenance and installation: Data relating to building components, like the valve of a circulating pump for instance, is recorded in full thanks to BIM2FM and can be called up quickly in the event of a defect – which speeds up building maintenance significantly.

The quality control centre also contributes to continuous improvement of the data quality. Discussions and negotiations with maintenance companies and stakeholders are now possible at an earlier stage of the construction process and make planning and implementing future renovations and conversions easier.

Project insights

• Planning reliability: The solution makes the data relevant for facility management available much earlier ­– for increased planning reliability during the construction process and timely preparation for commissioning.

• Data quality: Easily adaptable interfaces and the quality control centre enable Insel Gruppe AG to continuously improve the quality of the building data.

• Efficiency: Faster data transfer thanks to partial automation.

• Generic transfer objects (GTO) help with future data requests.

• Integration: The adaptors concept provides the necessary building blocks to easily integrate the source and target systems.

• Reusability for future BIM models from other construction projects.

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