October 1 Mistra InfraMaint’s annual programme meeting was held. A lot has happened since the kickoff almost exactly a year ago.
“It’s so fun to see everything going on”,says programme director Annika Malm.
Around 45 participants from the programme’s projects, parties and other stakeholders participated in the gathering held in Stockholm. The day started with a presentation on the programme’s situation today. Annika Malm started out in the concept of Asset Management.
“It is about optimising performance, cost and risk to achieve more sustainable maintenance, weighing the factors against each other at all levels to make good decisions. Digitisation and data give us new opportunities, but we must understand what data and values are important. It is only when we understand what we can develop useful methods and tools”, says Annika Malm.
Focusing om digitalisation
The main focus during the day was inspiration and discussions about the possibilities and risks of digitalisation.
What are the driving forces for digital systems? The answers are in the word.
“Successful digital companies such as Netflix, Spotify, Uber and Storytel are young, barely more than ten years old. But Swedish municipalities exist in a different reality. For example, the first water networks were built in the 1860s”, says David Nilsson, director of the KTH Water Center and member of the programme management.
The question is how Mistra InfraMaint can identify the standards, software, data structures, IT strategies and skills that the Swedish municipalities have now and in the near future.
Strategies are needed
“You cannot start from scratch, but you must understand how your organisations develop with digitalisation so that we can be more precise”, he says.
This was also the topic for the closing group discussions.
Some of the conclusions were that more digital strategies are needed and that they must be based on needs and prioritised on the basis of security and utility. It’s necessary to analyse needs before choosing system solutions. In addition, it is important to include consultants, suppliers and clients in this process.
Inspiration from others
Lina Bertling Tjernberg
The programme meeting also offered inspiration from other industries:
• Magnus Ohlsson, technical manager at Öresundskraft, described the company’s long-standing journey to reduce the risk of leakage in district heating systems. The result has been better decision support through connected systems.
• Lina Bertling Tjernberg, researcher at KTH, talked about data-based maintenance optimization in power networks and how Asset Management can work in power systems where large amounts of data open up new opportunities.
• Kristina Gabrielii, Chairman of the Board of Mistra InfraMaint and Program Manager for the innovation programme Smart Built Environment, focused on information infrastructure, which is one of Smart Built’s special theme areas. Today, information flows are often complicated, which increases the risk of error sources, which can be met by new standards and processes.
The projects
Speeddating and networking.
In addition to the theme of digitalisation, the programme meeting provided opportunities to make new contacts and listen to presentations from the individual projects.
Two of them were given a little more space: 3.1 a Roadmap and methods for competence building and 2.1 Systems logic and business model alignment in smart maintenance of infrastructure.
To build sustainable competence is one of the programme’s specific thematic areas. 3.1 a is the only project that has been completed so far. The goal was to develop a roadmap for competence building. The final report proposes methods to proceed with the competence issues within the program. One is micro learning, that is short mini-courses in mobile formats such as podcasts and videos.
“You should be able to listen, see and learn when it suits your everyday life. The sections should be between 5 and 15 minutes”, says Gunn-Mari Löfdahl, competence coordinator and assistant programme manager.
Master thesis
Mats Engwall and Tommy Giertz.
Next year, the ambitious investment will begin. Then the first micro-education will produced, a task that is performed in to the projects 3.1 b Roadmap and methods for competence building and 3.2 Training materials and courses.
Within project 2.1 Systems logic and business model alignment in smart maintenance of infrastructure, Emil Mårtensson and Philip Rumman have completed their thesis “Asset management in the public sector”.
It is based on a case study at Stockholm Vatten och Avfall AB (SVOA). Mats Engwall (professor at KTH and project manager) together with Tommy Giertz, strategic development engineer at SVOA, presented some of the conclusions that you can read more about here.