Facilities Management Software/Sharing Information Across 'Kingdoms'

[Wanderer]

I work in a 6mil sq ft medical facility and we also overlap with a medical school, two colleges and another hospital, and have blueprints dating back to the early 1900's.

Currently we're using a combination of Autodesk MAP 2006/vanilla LT 2005/MS Access 97 and adobe pdf writer 6 to share information across departments/entities.

We, in engineering, are in charge of recording and managing MEPFP system floor plans and risers, and work jointly with safety and environmental health on Life Safety systems/issues. Our construction department maintains our architectural backgrounds and manages new construction.

Biggest hurdle, as with everywhere, keeping the information up to date. Which is, of course, impossible.

I'll let some others chime in here with questions? comments on their setups, etc so I don't feel like I'm just sitting here talking to myself.

[brian.duran]

We've got the same problems here at our site although, it might be worse because we don't have specific responsibilities defined for drawing types. (They can be owned by Process Engineering, Site Services Engineering, Building Maintenance)

We're working on reigning in all of the information to one location but, it's been a difficult path.

Does your site have any regulatory requirements for maintaining your engineering documents?

[Wanderer]

We've got the same problems here at our site although, it might be worse because we don't have specific responsibilities defined for drawing types. (They can be owned by Process Engineering, Site Services Engineering, Building Maintenance)

We're working on reigning in all of the information to one location but, it's been a difficult path.

Does your site have any regulatory requirements for maintaining your engineering documents?

That's the problem here, as I'm sure it is everywhere else.
Our drawings are maintained by myself (in engineering/maint for our campus), by IS (it/info systems - corporate entity), and by Telecommunications (another corporate entitiy), and our projects are managed by our Design Group (you guessed it, also run by corporate), and the space is managed by a 3rd party who is paid by corporate.

So, sharing information (getting it from corporate and the 3rd party) is hard enough, but, trying to get IS/TFC to share their documents with us is like pulling teeth. They get base drawings, some updates from me, but, don't share what work they authorize via their department (small projects, but, likely 10-20 per month, that makes a big different over time).

breaking down the information kingdoms, getting people to work together is the biggest problem we all face. I've taken over the life-safety documentation (from carpentry/paint and environmental health, who were all doing things [statements of condition/upgrades, etc] without sharing, before I came here)

[whhunt]

We are an Electrical Utility Company with about 390k sf of buildings, using "Facility Center" software (Tririga).
It is a database attached to CAD.
In CAD we have bldgs, floors, rooms and people attached.
Data jack and telephone jack numbers are in the database,
they aren’t attached in CAD because of the amount of work required and they rarely change.
We can print out color floor plans showing vacant/occupied areas or
usage (office, service, circulation, amenity, support, conf rooms, etc).
We can get sq ftg of the bldgs, floors, and areas.
We aren’t using the Move Manager portion.
PDF files are used for web sharing of drawing information (room numbers, people, jack numbers, printers, and copiers).

I see you are using AutoCAD Map, do you have capabilities beyond what I have described above?

We also have the Maintenance Department using it to track equipment service and bldg work orders.

[Wanderer]

I've heard of that program. How many employees do you have (seems that would take almost as much effort to track as the telephones, but, we have a decent turnover in most departments here, with probably about 7,000 hospital employees and at least as many independant medical staff using our space).

I would love to print out the color-coded maps like that. So, you are in autocad, and trigia is a plug-in that you would call from within autocad to query specific properties? (such as occupied/unoccupied or room usage?)

I am using MAP, and there are plenty of database/querying capabilities built into it, but, I must admit, I have only barely scratched the surface of what they can do.

Can I ask whether you were there during the setup of your system? If you were, I'd like to know how you went about it? How long it took? If you had to move many documents from paper to cad? How many people were working on it?

Thanks.

We are an Electrical Utility Company with about 390k sf of buildings, using "Facility Center" software (Tririga).
It is a database attached to CAD.
In CAD we have bldgs, floors, rooms and people attached.
Data jack and telephone jack numbers are in the database,
they aren’t attached in CAD because of the amount of work required and they rarely change.
We can print out color floor plans showing vacant/occupied areas or
usage (office, service, circulation, amenity, support, conf rooms, etc).
We can get sq ftg of the bldgs, floors, and areas.
We aren’t using the Move Manager portion.
PDF files are used for web sharing of drawing information (room numbers, people, jack numbers, printers, and copiers).

I see you are using AutoCAD Map, do you have capabilities beyond what I have described above?

We also have the Maintenance Department using it to track equipment service and bldg work orders.

[aaronrumple]

This doesn't sound like a CAD issue, but more of a document management issue. You might look at things like AutoManager Meridian by Cyco. Monsanto uses this for ISO 9000 compliance. It allows for check-in check out and has a tracking and approval system built in. It isn't cheap, but does track documents and changes over time quite well. It will handle cad and other documents using the same tracking process.

There are other EDM (Engineering Document Management ) software packages out there, this is just one I'm somewhat familiar with.

[whhunt]

Actually we use 2 platforms. AutoCAD for projects and Microstation for Facility Center,
It is for Political Reasons. Facility Center actually has more features in the AutoCAD version. I have to start CAD with a special icon, to activate the database link. Any equipment can be placed in CAD, as a block, and attach the block to the database.
All of the properties come from the database. Normally querying is done in the Facility Center software.
We have 900 employees, the churn rate is 15% a year. The telephone number is within the 'employee name' block. Updates in CAD aren't automatic, I must run an update routine which changes the block info. I believe in AutoCAD the blocks aren't required, plain text works.
I was there for the installation and an upgrade. We hired a third party for assistance in both situations. The setup of standards for Facility Center are involved, as everything must be predetermined, predefined before entering info and attaching CAD to the database.
So building, floor, room, cubicle, employee, telephone number all needs standards.
This took time, even with guidance from the third party company. The cost of the software is much more than AutoCAD, although it can be purchased in modules. There is a yearly fee, like AutoCAD's Subscription service. All of our plans were in CAD, and only needed to be connected to the database. Then all items have to be individually connected (room, people). Mostly I did all the work, several weeks (off and on).
the work on the Maintenance portion was much more involved, with more items to setup and three people involved.

How much setup time was MAP?

[RTCADMAN]

I'm currently setting up our facility with a tracking system for infrastructure (UPS power, Fire systems, Emergency power, etc.) using FM Desktop. I cleaned up the floor plan to the point of only showing architectural features. I then use this as an X-ref for all the other drawings. The other drawings are smaller areas of our facility broken down by sector and floor. It is a huge facility! Using FM Desktop Link I then input "intelligent blocks into a databased linked drawing. I am the lone Cad. Tech in the facilities dept. setting this up.

Any of this sound familiar? Is there anyone else using FM Desktop?

[Wanderer]

I'm currently setting up our facility with a tracking system for infrastructure (UPS power, Fire systems, Emergency power, etc.) using FM Desktop. I cleaned up the floor plan to the point of only showing architectural features. I then use this as an X-ref for all the other drawings. The other drawings are smaller areas of our facility broken down by sector and floor. It is a huge facility! Using FM Desktop Link I then input "intelligent blocks into a databased linked drawing. I am the lone Cad. Tech in the facilities dept. setting this up.

Any of this sound familiar? Is there anyone else using FM Desktop?

Good deal, that's how we started out. Keeping the background floorplans clean and up to date is a full time job in itself sometimes. We use those as x-refs for our departments Ductwork, Piping, Power, Lighting, Plumbing and Sprinkler plans. (and honestly, when creating the systems plans, I put one set all together, using fields in the titleblock to read the filename, then copied the entire getup to each subsequent discipline).

Not using FMDesktop yet, but, please, feel free to head over to the FMDesktop forum and post some questions, tips, experiences, etc.