Success Stories
Bau- und Liegenschaftsbetrieb NRW
Digital FM service provider management in the cloud with pitFM and pitFM OpenConnect at BLB NRW
Project facts
Customer
Head office
Industry
pit products & solutions
Project description
The Bau- und Liegenschaftsbetrieb NRW (BLB NRW) is responsible for the maintenance of 4,038 buildings with over 50,000 fault reports and around 50,000 maintenance and inspection orders to be processed each year. The combination of pitFM and pitFM OpenConnect gives all internal employees and external service providers involved in the facility management processes seamless access to all relevant information. This ensures a secure, compliant and efficient maintenance process at BLB NRW.
Over the years, various software systems have been introduced and developed at BLB NRW to support building management. As a result of these individual solutions, data was sometimes redundant or inconsistent in different application programs. The internal employees and external facility management (FM) service providers involved in building management worked with different solutions, which meant that there were frequent media disruptions (analog/digital) in the process.
BLB NRW therefore decided to introduce a Computer Aided Facility Management (CAFM) system as a central data hub for building management. The solution should enable all those involved in real estate management to work without media discontinuity. And all in compliance with the high IT and information security requirements of the NRW state administration network.
In 2020, pit-cup GmbH was awarded the contract to introduce a CAFM system. At the end of 2023, pitFM went live as a central tool for space management, the management of technical facilities and the entire maintenance process. The CAFM system also serves as a central data hub between different IT applications at BLB NRW. The solution is currently used by 430 internal users and 700 employees of external facility management service providers.
pitFM supports the following processes and tasks in particular:
- Master data management of the structural and technical systems relevant for maintenance
- Automated planning of maintenance services
- Processing of repairs
- Generating service specifications as a basis for the tendering of maintenance services
- Interface connection to SAP, document management, energy data management and other systems
- Service documentation by the FM service provider
- Automated quality assurance by the BLB NRW
The technical implementation
For a consistent, digital and sustainable maintenance process, it is essential that all those involved in the process - both internally and externally - have access to the central FM database. The high security, IT and compliance requirements of the state of NRW must also be taken into account.
In order to achieve this, an independent pitFM web application for the external FM service providers (the service provider portal) was provided in an Internet Demilitarized Zone (IDMZ) in parallel to the installation of the „internal“ pitFM solution in the NRW state administration network. In the service provider portal, all relevant processes and data are made available to the FM service providers and synchronized with the „internal“ pitFM solution. Dedicated access authorizations for the various service providers are automatically controlled based on the service description from contract management.
Data provision and data synchronization between the two systems is carried out with pitFM OpenConnect. With pitFM OpenConnect, all participants can access the central FM database directly or indirectly and consume or provide relevant data. This ensures the digital and consistent maintenance process at BLB NRW. This consistency represents significant progress in the FM sector.
In order to meet the high IT and information security requirements, pit consistently relied on innovative yet tried-and-tested technologies provided by pitFM OpenConnect when implementing the service provider portal. The implemented system environment was tested by CERT NRW in a grey box model. The internal solution and service provider portal communicate on the basis of current standards such as.
Authentication mechanisms
Residual service (synchronous application scenarios)
Queue service (asynchronous application scenarios)
CONCLUSION
In order to manage such a large and heterogeneous real estate portfolio efficiently and sustainably, the right software tool is required in addition to transparent and fully digital processes.
pitFM is a CAFM solution that stands for over 30 years of IT and process expertise in the field of real estate management. Thanks to the open system architecture, pitFM could be flexibly adapted to the individual requirements of BLB NRW during implementation. Thanks to the complete digitalization and associated automation of the maintenance process, pitFM and pitFM OpenConnect enable efficient and sustainable property management.
All data relevant to the maintenance process is managed centrally in pitFM or exchanged automatically via interfaces with third-party systems such as SAP. This ensures both the necessary process and information transparency, which is essential for efficient service provider management.
Just a few weeks after the Hypercare phase, it became clear that the consistent digital process handling with pitFM had significantly reduced the processing effort for maintenance orders (from the requirement notification to the service allocation in SAP).