Though the majority of the management committee claims or believes that apartment maintenance cannot afford digital transformation, modern technologies such as Cloud, IoT, Mobile and Automation are helping them to adopt digital technologies to control the escalating monthly costs.

Below is a typical monthly expense for an apartment with 500 units and the bigger the size, the bigger the scale:

The number of apartments is increasing and they manage the cost escalations in 2 ways:

Some apartments follow the traditional cost reduction approach with cheaper labour through low-cost FMS by suffering the pain points such as inefficiencies in responding to residential issues, potential pilferages or other illicit arrangements between staff and the vendors and the quality. These new technologies can help the traditional way of managing apartment maintenance to improve those inefficiencies and gain cost savings.

Other apartments, follow a direct engagement with FMS to provide those tools to achieve their goals. They force traditional FMS to adopt digital technologies and try to control the cost.

What are digital transformation use cases in apartment maintenance?

Complete Water Management

According to TrackBot research, more than 30% of the maintenance cost for an apartment is associated with the water – Water intake (purchase through tanker, municipality, bore wells, Rain Water Harvesting systems, etc.), it’s consumption (Domestic purposes, Swimming Pool, Gardening, Clubhouses, Common area cleaning, etc.) and its treatment processes (Sewage Treatment Plant).

The fact is that the majority of the apartments ignore the regular maintenance required for those equipments to ensure the best results achieved with the original spending for Rain Water Harvesting, Bore wells, etc.

Automation

It’s really encouraging to see that more than 40% of apartments automated the process of running bore wells, pumping overhead tanks, operating the common area lighting, etc. Though many of those activities are automated, still the challenges continue with inefficient utilization with lacking measurement of bore well outputs, frequent replacement of analogue sensors installed or constant failures due to lack of close monitoring of historic data.

System Management

There are different market-leading ERP solutions companies who are providing a mechanism to collate the equipment information (Pumps, Motors, Transformer, DG, Lifts, Common Area Lights, Filters, etc.) apart from Maintenance Fees Management, Gate management, Communication, etc. But these systems lack effective tracking of the equipment with near real-time history for respective repair or purchase which makes a large number of Management Committee members take ad-hoc decisions on emergency situations and finally end up in losing money.

Task Management

More than 50% of the maintenance cost is on the salary of – Estate Manager, Plumber, Electrician, Housekeeping, Security, STP Operator and Swimming Pool operator. The study also shows that less than 30% of the resources are utilized and they do not complete the routine tasks (checking equipment working condition, regular cleaning, timely replacements, etc.), which results in spending an enormous amount of money as lump-sum, when the system gets damaged and in an irrecoverable stage.

Ticket Management

Interestingly, almost all ERP products are providing a solution for residents to raise tickets – either by calling the Estate Office directly or through the app. But a large amount of data is getting lost when the ERP solution doesn’t provide a dashboard with insights. Are they resolving the tickets on time, how is the trend, and all resources are utilized effectively?

Reports and Analytics

Finally, the reports and analytics to derive some insights – Is the money collected from the residents spending judiciously? Is the maintenance hike justified with the actual expenses? Are the investments in projects like Rain Water Harvesting yielding the results as expected? As pointed out earlier, the traditional way to answer these questions is by blaming ageing buildings, deteriorating quality, not yielding bore wells and poor infrastructure provided by the builder but the facts are hiding behind as there are no data in hand.

Monitoring the status

Yes, all apartments are recording the daily status (Tanker purchase, meter readings, bore well inflow, Water Quality, Energy consumption, pH/Chlorine of swimming pool, MLSS for STP, etc.) but in the book which is kept inside the WTP or STP rooms or even share it over WhatsApp group. The challenge is for analyzing this information and gets some insights. But modern smart monitoring technologies (like TrackBot) are equipped to bring the status of all amenities into a single pane of glass with visual indicators and alert you when there is a deviation from the regular pattern to take proactive measures.

When the technologies are matured and available at an affordable price, adopting those digital transformations is always beneficial for everyone. Digital transformation is a journey and it is an individual choice to decide when to start TrackBot will be a good platform to start with.

Why Facilus? Facilus Facility Management Pvt Ltd

• Realtime water monitoring 

• Automated System for Motors, Blowers 

• Water leakage and wastage arrest

• Save Energy and Improve the Efficiency of STP

• Facilitate Solar Grid setup for STP & Street lights

• Pollution control board-approved lab reports

• Plant Preventive maintenance

• Plant revamp support

• Daily reports

• Back-End SME Support 24*7

• Core Team PhD. Holders of Chemistry to solve your problems.

Contact Us.

Jagadeesh P

CEO, Founder & FMS Auditor @ Facilus Facility Management Pvt Ltd.

Mail ID: jagadeesh.p@facilusfms.com

Mobile No: +91 87470 78508

Website: www.facilusfms.com

Address: 20/1, 2nd Floor, 14th Cross Rd, opp. to SBI Bank ATM, 1st Block, Rajajinagar, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560010