Digitalisation to Transform Property Management

Guarding the Victoria Harbour, the 118-storey International Commerce Centre (ICC) is one of the most prominent landmarks in Hong Kong. With a GFA of 3 million square feet, it gives a huge task to the property management team, therefore digitalisation is adopted to assist in enhancing management quality and efficiency. Ir Thomas Ho, Chairman of the Construction Industry Council has previously visited ICC to learn the experience of the digitalisation journey of the ICC team in the past decade.

Digitalisation is an indispensable part of modern day construction. However when ICC started to build in 2005, digitalisation was not as developed as today is, and the application of Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Digital Twin were not popular among the industry. Therefore the ICC’s team has to keep pace with the times by moving towards digitalisation. Dr. Calvin Kam, Founder of Strategic Building Innovation, has been assisting ICC en route towards digitalisation, he explained that establishing digital models was the first task on hand, “It was not easy to trace back the building plans and information that were submitted in the last decade. We turn them to a single source of truth and build the digital models, that’s the first achievement we made.”

Creating an Electronic Database

BIM can be seen everywhere during the facility management stage, its power even proliferates when it is used in concert with Common Data Environment (CDE). According to Dr. Kam, ICC database is very detailed indeed, “Take glasses management as an example, their information was only being recorded on paper and excel back 10 years ago. But with the aid of digitalisation, every detail of the glasses, their identities, naming, and even stock status in mainland factories are all in hand.”

Customer experience is the top priority of rental management, ICC has made use of digital solutions such as Virtual Reality (VR) and Automated Reporting to help tenants to grasp the spatial information, on the other hand it can also speed up the whole process. “The building is alive, sometimes our tenants may have different spatial preferences, we can hence generate automated reports based on their requests, with details of the glass facades, lighting or fire sprinklers related to that space are all calculated. Information of the delivery of possessions is also being recorded in CDE.” Said Mr Kevin Chu, Deputy Managing Director of Kai Shing Management Services Limited.

Patrolling with the Help of AR

ICC's digital process focuses on BIM and the team have also used other technologies to enhance customer experience. In recent years, Augmented Reality (AR) has become popular. Kevin Chu stated that ICC's management team has introduced AR to assist in patrol and maintenance. "In the past, we used to patrol with a 'patrol stick' and phone, but now we use AR to patrol. Facility maintenance is also different from before. We only need to scan the environment to input data and directly issue orders to frontline personnel." In addition, the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) are also widely used in ICC. For example, different sensors are installed in the renovating units to monitor noise and air quality. The management team also uses AI to assist in the operation of CCTV by using analysis to ensure that cameras can effectively report abnormal situations.

ICC is 484 metres high, with a curtain wall area of 125,000 square metres. While curtain wall inspection often requires the use of gondolas, making the process lengthy. Kevin Chu said that in recent years, the team has collaborated with a start-up to use drones to scan the curtain walls, record and analyse their condition, which helps to avoid many working at height procedures. "We record the problems of the building in the system and scan them again after the typhoon for comparison, hoping to effectively track the problem without having to use gondolas."

Setting the Bar for Local Sustainable Construction

As buildings account for about 39% of global carbon emissions, green buildings are a key step towards achieving a zero carbon environment. ICC uses digitalisation and IoT systems to process big data and monitor electricity consumption, temperature, waste volume, etc. The management team has also collaborated with Hong Kong Polytechnic University to analyse the energy consumption of the building's lifecycle to promote energy conservation and emission reduction. ICC's sustainability performance is outstanding and has won numerous awards, apart from gaining the Platinum BEAM Plus Existing Buildings V2.0 Certification and the LEED Platinum, ICC was the first building in Hong Kong to be certified by the UK Building Research Establishment’s "BREEAM" assessment system. Ir Thomas Ho speaks highly of ICC as it is one of the most advanced digitally-managed buildings in Hong Kong, setting the bar for local sustainable development.