Plaza Santa Catalina shopping center is located on Carlos Villaran avenue near the intersection of Javier Prado with Paseo de la República in Lima, Peru. With an area of 11,000 square metres and more than 9,000 square meters of leasable space distributed on three levels, it opened its doors to visitors in April 2019. Dormeson SA, a subsidiary of Grupo Mulder, started developing this project in 2018, with an investment of approximately 9 million U.S. dollars. Plaza Santa Catalina has a wide range of movie theaters, pharmacies, restaurants, stores, a sports center, and a 200 parking spaces area.

The proper maintenance of a large building can be very complicated. Dormeson understands that the facilities management industry is undergoing a digital transformation and wanted to invest in innovation that enables effective, timely decisions, increase transparency, and reduce operating cost while delivering an excellent visitor experience.

The facility manager oversees many different systems and needs reliable data to manage and track maintenance activities and resolve other incidents. To increase efficiency, avoid costly and time-consuming complications, and enable remote management, all data must be gathered in one system, including access to 3D data. Moving from traditional non digital paper forms to digital facility management systems was a priority for Dormeson. Renzo Salas, property manager at Dormeson, was looking for the most efficient and effective way to overcome these challenges.

“A 3D digital twin helps us to reduce the complexity of large buildings. The combination of a 3D digital twin and web-based facilities management software for portfolio management, location-based asset tracking, and preventive and corrective maintenance management increase transparency, productivity and save costs,” said Salas. “For the operation and maintenance of Plaza Santa Catalina, we need accurate digital records of the building in one system; that’s one of the biggest facility management challenges. We need to ensure that we have access to the data remotely from anywhere, which helps us to increase productivity with our daily tasks related to our tenants, facility, and operations management.”

Intelligent data capture and processing

For the creation of the digital twin, Leica Geosystems reality capture and imaging technology captured 11,000 square meters in two days. Dormeson’s main requirement was to use fast and reliable technology that could scan the different areas of the building without interrupting the operation of the shopping center. The scanned zones included surrounding areas (exterior), the parking area, water installation on the basement, electric room, rooftop, air conditioning machines area, all stairs and publicly accessible areas of Plaza Santa Catalina, for their capture the team used different solutions:

  1. 90% of the building was captured with the Leica RTC360 3D laser scanner.
  2. Limited space areas such as part of the control room were captured with the Leica BLK360 imaging laser scanner.
  3. Also, Leica DISTO laser distance metre was used to take single distance measurements to verify existing conditions directly in the field>
  4. The team used Leica BLK3D to take images of critical assets such as the air conditioning machine areas and plant room.

“Intelligent building management is a priority for Dormerson’s real estate business,” said Salas. “We need smart data and insights for the management of large building structures and digital workflows that facilitate processes.”

Facility and asset management transformation

Geomap, a cloud and GIS-based Integrated Workplace Management System (IWMS), supported in the digitalisation of the shopping centre’s facilities and asset support services. Geomaps’ IWMS platform imported data of Leica Geosystems scanners enabling a visual 3D management via CAD support.

Geomap has created checklists for the machineries and assets, allowing technicians to be always informed on the building’s maintenance that has to be performed; also, building and facility managers keep track of the operations and performances. Work order management, energy consumptions, budget management, and building documents are now centralised in just one platform making the management of the shopping centre much more efficient.

Digitising Plaza Santa Catalina in the Geomap IWMS software solution resulted in significant benefits on asset and maintenance tracking and cost savings.

Geomap Mobile APP

At a time of rapid acceleration in digital adoption, the transformation of facility and asset management processes is a reality.

Accurate 3D digital twin combined with IWMS gives the facility manager a complete remote control of the physical asset. An assets register has been created thanks to the use of the Geomap Survey App on-site. The assets have been labeled with Qr-code, and technical data of each asset such as brand, model, last maintenances, location, etc., are digitised and available to the building managers.

All this turns into numerous advantages for the operation and management of the building, including:

  1. More transparency and efficiency for operations and maintenance.
  2. The facility manager has more insights into the building’s performance, resulting in reduced assets and building systems breakdown.
  3. Remote assets creation and management are possible thanks to accurate 3D data.
  4. Digital reality data for space management.
  5. Provide a better customer visit experience by having reliable and continuously monitored facilities.

“The digital twin brings new ways of thinking; it reduces the complexity of the building and helps me assess decisions for its operation remotely from the office. Accurate 2D and 3D data allows me to understand better and resolve incidents and share this information with other internal and external stakeholders. This makes it easier to make the right decision for the management of Plaza Santa Catalina,” said Salas.