Geographic Information Systems and Facility Management

In industry and big organisations facility management has become a managing tool of more and more importance. In times of decreasing profit rates and harder competition every company is forced to develop better strategies for resource and facility management. In this context the questions arise: What is facility management, what offers GIS and how can Geographic Information Systems improve facility management? In GIS we are focussing on how to import, manage, analyse and present spatial data. In facility management, however, the focus lies on the management of facilities, buildings and the rooms inside. Buildings have a 3D geometry and many attributes. Graphic Information Systems handle such data. We are trying to develop a concept that takes advantage of GIS functionality to implement a so called Building Information System. Spatial data of a building are stored and managed by a GIS DBMS. The Institute for Photogrammetry at the University of Stuttgart is responsible for the implementation of a facility management system for all rooms and buildings of the University. In order to establish such an environment several steps have to be done. The evaluation process of existing systems is still in progress and CAFM (computer aided facility management) systems are still being developed. All these systems have to handle the problem of geometrical dimensions. Most of the systems represent databases only without any spatial link. For the management of a building, however, graphical data is required that is not thumb CAD data. It must be „intelligent“ graphic data. If e.g. you want to get an overview of all rooms in a building that are accessible for handicapped people you would prefer a map to a list. If you want to know to whom this particular room belongs, a mouseclick should deliver the results instead of offering endless lists. Another crucial point in these systems is that you also need 3D data or even 4D capability. The time factor is very important in FM. The University of Stuttgart is located in more than 100 buildings, severals of them are rented. In order to plan renovation, controlling the functions of the building, analyse which parts are often damaged, re-renting of buildings... an instrument for analysing is an absolute necessity. At the moment those analyses take too much time and are for that not very suited. The first step in order to get an operational Building Information System is to examine the requirements of the potential users. We created a questionnaire that helps us to examine the taskstock/requirements of the users . It was sent to a group of employees who were selected as a key group. In addition interviews were taken to maximize the feedback rate and quality of answers. Secondly a market study is undertaken to get an overview of possible system candidates. In the meantime we sort all questionnaires by different criteria such as workflow, main topics, analyses with time, 2D, 3D and simple database queries. After the sorting we get an overview about the relevant criteria that help us selecting the appropriate system.