EHL Immobilien (EHL Real Estate)
“Sure, an old car with a three-speed gearbox and no air conditioning will get me to my summer holiday destination. But I’ll be too hot, and the car might break down on the way. Alternatively, I can make the trip in a brand-new car with air conditioning, 200bhp and a seven-speed automatic. That’s what it feels like to work with iCL instead of manual checklists.”
Stefan Nakowitsch, Building Management Project Manager at EHL Immobilien
What our customer wanted to change
Lack of standardisation and potential sources of error
“The Austrian standard ÖNORM B 1300 is used to ensure property safety, i.e. to identify technical defects or potential hazards in properties in good time via numerous questions and inventories. In the past, manual checklists were used to conduct such property safety inspections. Equipped with plans, documents, printed checklists, a camera and a voice recorder, inspectors would set out to examine their buildings. Back in the office, they would record all the data in electronic form. It normally took them multiple hours to put together a useful summary from the photos, voice recordings and handwritten notes for each property.
For project manager Stefan Nakowitsch, an electronic checklist needed to meet the following requirements to win him over: “One of the major shortcomings of our old approach was that we recorded data at one point and entered it in the database at another point. This left lots of room for errors. I wanted to combine these two processes and find a tablet-based solution that I could customise without any programming knowledge. It was also important to us to be able to use this software solution in different divisions at EHL.”
How iCL is used
Property safety inspections and move-in and move-out inspections
EHL has been using Opti-Q’s intelligent checklist for move-in and move-out inspections since 2015. In early 2016 they started using the app during property safety inspections as well. Stefan Nakowitsch tells us he now conducts inspections using only a tablet, working through the electronic checklist step by step. He can also import photos directly into the list and make notes in sketches.
“The intelligent checklist helps me ensure data is collected without errors. It makes my work a lot easier and facilitates the job of training staff as well.” As soon as he completes his inspection, Nakowitsch generates a nearly finished report with just one click. There’s no longer any need to enter data at the office, which used to take up a lot of time.
How EHL benefits
Professionalism and quality assurance
“The high degree of standardisation is particularly important to me. With iCL, I can specify formulas. This automatically improves quality over manual checklists. The ÖNORM B 1300 standard is really complex, and I’m amazed how easy it is to reproduce it in the intelligent checklist. Being able to design everything myself and adapt questions at any time is another feature that really helps me in my work,” he says, summing up the advantages of iCL.
What Nakowitsch particularly likes about Qpti-Q is their high-calibre assistance. “Whenever we have any questions, we get quick and straightforward responses. Opti-Q continually develops new features to meet customer needs. This makes them a valuable long-term partner for us.”
About our customer
EHI Immobilien & Immobilien Gesellschaft
Founded in 1991, EHL Immobilien is one of Austria’s leading real estate service providers and specialises in commercial, investment and residential real estate. The company’s services range from real estate brokerage, property valuation and property management to construction management, asset and centre management, portfolio management, market research and investment consulting. A partnership with global real estate giant Savills provides EHL Immobilien with a global network. In 2015, EHL Immobilien brokered around 42,000 sq m of office space and around 850 residential units (rental/sale/investment) with a transaction volume of roughly EUR 800 million. In the fast-growing real estate valuation segment, its annual volume exceeded the EUR 8 billion mark.
EHL Immobilien Management is one of Austria’s leading private management companies with a current property portfolio of 1.6 million sq m in various asset classes. It focuses on the management of residential, office and retail properties. In addition to traditional property management, its services include centre management, construction management and facility management.
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