FM-FOCUS software from Visual Technology to improve facilities management

Citation

(1998), "FM-FOCUS software from Visual Technology to improve facilities management", Facilities, Vol. 16 No. 9/10. https://doi.org/10.1108/f.1998.06916iab.001

FM-FOCUS software from Visual Technology to improve facilities management

FM-FOCUS software from Visual Technology to improve facilities management

Keywords Intelligent buildings

Clifford Chance (a legal practice in the UK) has chosen FM-FOCUS software from Visual Technology (VT) to help them manage their London premises, assets and personnel more effectively.

With a new 600,000 square foot London office housing more than 1,200 employees, Clifford Chance's FM team needed an "intelligent" system which would allow them to co-ordinate and integrate disparate data from each department, such as personnel records, job records, computer and telephone registers, furniture and building services records. Without FM-FOCUS, the firm's FM department could produce computerised drawings of the office layouts, but was unable to build links between such floorplans and vital records of office assets.

Using VT's innovative FM-FOCUS system, Clifford Chance embarked on the task of building dynamic links between assets and objects to the CAD drawings.

Rather than creating and maintaining a single database, FOCUS technology links these drawings (of the office layouts) to various departmental databases, often running under several different applications appropriate to the requirements of individual disciplines. The company is thus able to ensure that discrete areas of data are created and maintained by those responsible for them. No major database-building exercise, but ultimately, VT has created a "virtual database" for the law firm.

George Stevenson, chairman of VT commented, "This is an all too common problem for facilities managers since most CAD-based solutions require disparate divisional data to be translated into a single database.

"FM-FOCUS, offers effectively a 'glue' to tie together existing systems, existing networks and existing databases. It provides dynamic links to a variety of departmental databases, usually running under several different applications. The people responsible for those particular processes can then manage this data. FM-FOCUS is currently the only system of its kind which can do this."

The new FM-FOCUS system means that the appropriate managers can now view, update and interrogate data in real-time through a simple, yet intelligent CAD plan of each floor of the building.

Geoff Campbell, office services manager for Clifford Chance explained: "With a 100 per cent office-movement churn rate, it was important to have a drawing package that talks to all our databases. The way this system has been written for us means that we can even link telephone and security systems into the database. The system is simple to use and needs hardly any training."