From data to decision: Lessons from Roskilde Municipality

How do you actually work with data in practice when you are in charge of 1,300 buildings?

In a webinar, Roskilde Municipality shared their experience in creating a common and usable data base for their property portfolio. Here we have collected the most important points.

Many organizations face the same challenge. Knowledge already exists, but it is difficult to gather and use in practice, especially when it is spread across people, systems and workflows.

See how Roskilde Municipality works in practice

How to create a common data base for 1,300 buildings and how do you use it to prioritise maintenance and budgets in practice?

In the webinar, Roskilde Municipality shares their concrete experiences, challenges and approach to work. It offers a rare insight into what work actually looks like when you go from ambition to implementation.

The starting point: Knowledge exists, but it's hard to use

Roskilde Municipality does not stand without knowledge of their buildings. Quite the opposite. The organization has a large amount of experience and insight from employees who work close to the buildings on a daily basis.

The challenge is that that knowledge is often person-borne and unstructured. That makes it vulnerable and hard to bring into play across. If an employee disappears, part of the insight also disappears, and at the same time it becomes difficult to use knowledge strategically.

This is especially evident when you have to answer very basic questions about the portfolio. How is the overall state? What will it cost to lift it? Where should we prioritize first? The answers exist in practice, but they require a lot of manual work to come up with.

Why work more data-driven?

The need for a more data-driven approach has not arisen out of desire alone. It's largely driven by an economic reality in which it's becoming more expensive to own and maintain buildings while budgets don't keep up.

This creates a pressure to use resources better and longer term. At the same time, there is a widespread recognition in the industry that planned and preventive maintenance is cheaper than emergency maintenance. The problem is that you need to be able to anticipate the need.

And that requires data. Not just about what happens now, but about what's to come in 1, 3, 5 and 10 years.

“Data is not the end in itself”

One of the most important points from the webinar is simple but crucial. Data is not the end in itself. This is a prerequisite for being able to prioritise better.

It also changes how you work with data. It's not about making data perfect, it's about making it usable. If you wait for perfect data, you never get started.

If you want to hear how Roskilde Municipality works specifically with this in practice, you can watch the webinar here.

From gut feeling to common starting point

A key challenge in many organizations is not a lack of knowledge, but a lack of a common starting point. Without a common data base, you spend time debating whether a building is good or bad, and how big the problem really is.

With data, you get a common reference point. This does not mean that data is perfect, but it does allow it to start somewhere else in the dialog. More concrete, more constructive and with less friction.

Start small but structured

Roskilde Municipality has not tried to solve everything at once. They have started with one build, tested their approach and adjusted along the way.

At the same time, they have worked with a clear structure with milestones and ongoing follow-up. It makes it possible to correct the course without losing direction. The experience is clear. It is more important that it be good than that it goes quickly.

A change throughout the organization

Working data-driven is not just a matter of technology. It is a change in the way we work and it affects both day-to-day operations and strategic management.

Therefore, the support of management is essential. When working with data becomes demanding, and it does, it is necessary that the direction is anchored all the way up the organization. Otherwise, you lose momentum.

Data as a basis for better decisions

A concrete result of the work is that Roskilde Municipality will receive an early first bid on the overall state of the portfolio. It's not perfect, nor is it finished, but it's workable.

This makes it possible to start communicating more concretely to management and politicians and to work longer term with maintenance. The most important thing is not that everything is right from the start, but that you create a starting point from which you can work further.

What can others learn?

Although the case is based on a municipality, the problem is recognizable to many organizations with larger portfolios.

Three things are particularly clear. One has to start before data is perfect. You have to make it a common project in the organization. And you have to be clear about why you are doing it, otherwise you will lose direction along the way.

If you want to hear the full review and examples from Roskilde Municipality, you can watch the webinar here.

Do you want to see what it could look like for you?

If you are curious about what it could look like for your buildings, we offer a review based on your own portfolio.

It takes about 30 minutes and gives a concrete picture of where you stand and what the next steps might be.

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