This spring, the National Police took an important step with BIMlink in setting up a future-proof digital real estate file. All real estate has been fully inventoried and digitally mapped over the past four years. And the police has quite a bit of real estate; 1.9 million square meters in more than 1,000 buildings. Much of the information is now uniformly stored and centrally accessible via BIMlink.
Ronald van Woezik of the National Police
National Police owns a lot of real estate that needs to be maintained, renovated or renovated on a regular basis. Making the right building data available is crucial in this respect. Ronald van Woezik was responsible for the monster project as Coordinator Cartotheek at the National Police. Over the past four years, he and his team have uploaded all real estate drawings and documents into BIMlink. His vision on the use and care of data are the basis of an interesting discussion about the experiences of the National Police with BIMlink.
The start
Just a look back; the National Police chose BIMlink in 2019. The implementation process was the start of a study led by Van Woezik into the question of how the platform could contribute to a future-proof digital real estate file. “The National Police wanted to manage all building plans centrally. And there is no less than 1.9 million square meters of real estate spread over more than 1,000 buildings, including police stations, offices and training facilities. So, it’s not surprising that the Cartotheek has grown in these years from two to eight central document managers. Together we ensure the optimization of data in BIMlink to create a successful implementation.”
Measurements
Good decisions require good information, Van Woezik knows. With this in mind, under his leadership, the team started measuring all real-estate in 2020 in order to accurately map out the entire real estate portfolio. “Basic information is needed about the square meters and functions of spaces in our objects,” he says. “The measurements were carried out in accordance with the applicable NEN2580 standard. We opted for a type A measurement, which means that all objects in all areas have been physically measured. The measurement of objects larger than 500 square meters was done by TEC partners. The smaller property objects were done by our team from the Cartotheek.”
With the architectural drawing, a universal underlay has been created that functions as a basic document for electrical engineering drawings, escape route plans that are necessary for all stakeholders like Facility Services, Sector Housing, contractors and suppliers.
Challenges
Van Woezik was the connection between the internal organization and BIMlink during this implementation process. He describes the challenges he faced at the start of the process. “Monitoring the agreements made and the internal processes has been one of the team’s main tasks from the start. We also wanted to get the BIMlink software installed on our ‘on-premise’ solution. So we did this with some extra support from our ICT department and the advisory role of BIMlink.”
BIMlink
Property file BIMlink
The National Police chose BIMlink to set up a nationwide management process and make data available everywhere. During this inventory, one uniform method of managing drawings was also designed and implemented. All information is centrally stored at one location and made accessible via the document management system BIMlink. “The cloud solution provides a quick and easy up-to-date view of our floor plans and BIM models. In recent months, more than 100 Facility Services people have already been trained to use BIMlink and agreements have been made about updating the data.”
Preparatory phase
The extensive inventory had a very concrete result when Van Woezik felt in 2020 that the existing information was not entirely correct. “But we didn’t know how much data would differ. In a pilot we had investigated 19 locations and it turned out that we had 7 percent less real estate under management than we thought. This significant difference confirmed that we had to look into this nationwide.”
Completion
The onboarding of BIMlink at the National Police is nearing completion, so training and workshops, among other things, are planned. Another next step is to process the collected data in the space management module and in Planon, the maintenance ticketing software available via an API on the BIMlink platform. “We have taken a big step with the measurement,” says Van Woezik. “Now we just have to put the dots on the ‘i’. For example, we are working on a BIM protocol that will be the guideline for renewal and renovation projects. Project management is eagerly waiting for that.”
Commissioning of BIMlink
Setting up and making the enormous amount of the National Police real estate available on the BIMlink platform was quite a task. “We regularly want to optimize the platform and are pleased to see that BIMlink continues to develop with new features that are even better suited to our internal processes. We have now laid a good foundation for quickly finding our property information. BIMlink has many valuable features, but personally I find the 3D viewer very useful. It will also help us manage the BIM models that we hope to have for all our real estate soon.”
