What happens when your facility manager retires and you suddenly risk losing decades of hands-on experience and knowledge about exactly how your building operates?
Maybe you have another long-term employee ready to step into those shoes and quickly train up, but that’s not always the case.
The most effective defense against knowledge loss is construction reality capture, which ensures all your facility’s maintenance information, manuals, and key system insights are captured, memorialized, and available for review by any team member at any time and in perpetuity.
But not all reality capture solutions work the same way, capture the same details, or offer the same benefits. It’s important for facility teams to choose reality capture options that’ll enhance facilities operations and maintenance and ensure that, regardless of staff turnover, no vital information will be lost.
Let’s dive into the three reality capture solutions, plus two additional tools, for facility teams to consider.
2D and 360 Photographs
Capturing high-definition photographs throughout your facility during construction can highlight exactly where the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) systems have been installed prior to cover-up. When properly captured and organized, these photos become an essential tool for finding and fixing future issues with minimal destructive discovery.
However, not establishing a proper file management system that intelligently archives thousands of photographs can lead to inefficient operations and costly delays when trying to find and address issues. When considering available advanced digital solution, it’s integral that facility teams adopt the use of a cloud-based platform, such as the Multivista Documentation System (MDS), which ties every photo to your building’s digital floorplan.
This creates a single source of truth that allows any member of your facility team to access, review, annotate, save, and email individual photos or other vital project information captured over the years. The ability to go back in time to see exactly what’s behind a wall or ceiling also unlocks unparalleled transparency for teams to manage and repair issues and even plan for the future
Video
Recording quality Owner Training Videos (OTVs) with clear audio and good lighting that feature knowledgeable professionals outlining exactly how to operate, repair, and maintain every system in your building creates a useful and vital tool. Additionally, ensuring those videos are available through a cloud-based platform is a crucial step in improving facilities management. Adding chapters to each recording improves searchability and efficiency by allowing teams to skip directly to key points relevant to their current task.
For even more effective facilities management and to maximize the shareability of facilities knowledge, place QR code stickers on equipment that directs viewers to the exact training video or manual they need.
3D Laser Scanning/BIM
When it comes to maintenance and futureproofing, digitizing assets through 3D Laser Scanning and Scan to BIM solutions is highly useful. Teams can digitize their buildings by turning point cloud data into an accurate Building Information Model (BIM). Depending on the type of project, BIMs can serve multiple Architecture, Engineering, Construction, and Operation (AECO) use cases.
Whether teams require visibility into architectural elements or MEP systems, or want to enhance future planning and expansion or renovation efforts, BIMs provide access to and utilization of vital site information, no matter the level of detail required.
Additional Tool Considerations:
Firestopping Assessment
Facility teams, particularly those in the healthcare industry, have rigorous standards to uphold, and firestopping is an integral part of their life-safety measures. Maintaining any facility above-ceiling systems requires additional efforts to investigate, document, and monitor.
With the emergence of construction AI analysis solutions, firestopping assessments can now be completed without the need for destructive investigations during construction. Working in near-real time, the analysis can generate task-list items that allow site teams to act on issues before it’s too late.
Additionally, after handoff, facility teams can reference completed firestopping assessments and use this data to inform ongoing efforts to maintain above-ceiling life-safety measures during building operation.
UAV/Drones
UAV/Drones may not be an obvious solution for facilities management, but not every detail of a building or an entire site can be captured from the ground. Much like exact-built progression documentation of the inside of a facility, exterior documentation is important in ensuring facilities teams have a complete understanding of what was installed, where and when.
With exterior elements such as cladding or waterproofing, it can be time-consuming and cumbersome to manually document progression details via scaffolding or from ground level. However, utilizing UAV/Drones to capture exterior conditions speeds things up considerably and captures important details in HD photo and video formats. Having the ability to see exactly what was installed before cover-up gives facilities teams the added benefit of not having to guess or perform destructive investigations to find and fix issues.
Documenting unique exterior details can be challenging from both safety and accessibility perspectives, particularly when performing heritage site preservation efforts, . By turning to UAV/Drone documentation, every angle and detail can be captured in HD quality in much less time than it would take to manually report.
Conclusion
With an aging workforce and increasingly challenging hiring conditions, it’s essential to prevent valuable facility knowledge loss. Reality capture technology offers various highly useful solutions to help your teams avoid knowledge gaps, increase facilities efficiency, reduce risk, and plan better for the future. After all, properly maintained buildings operate better and last longer.
Is your team benefiting from reality capture data right now? To learn how to protect your building from facility knowledge loss in the future, reach out to Multivista to book a demo now.
