In this difficult time for the entire country, representatives of the municipality responsible for the provision of public services must optimize the management of city resources and ensure the reliability, preservation, and accounting of assets and adapt to rapidly changing conditions.
The destruction of the housing stock and urban infrastructure of Kharkiv that houses 1.4 million people led to the need to calculate the costs associated with the restoration, repair, and reconstruction of infrastructure, urban and industrial facilities. To that point, operational efficiency and flexibility are key factors to enable municipality representatives to adapt to changes and requirements for the safety and security of the city.
Sergey Sokhatskiy, Managing Director of Vetasi Ukraine, says “we as asset performance managers ensure the least interruption of electricity and water supply and public transport services and the prioritisation of replacement and repairs to damaged infrastructure.”
Vetasi, an international asset management consultancy and part of Cohesive, volunteered its services to join the Kharkiv City Council and IBM Ukraine LLC in applying digital innovative technologies for physical asset management in Ukraine’s second largest city. The main objective is the creation of a single integrated digital database dealing with all urban infrastructure as well as the housing stock, the operational and defunct.
This will enable Kharkiv to deal flexibly and efficiently with restoring power, water supply, essential transportation and housing, thereby enhancing the safety and livelihood of its residents. When Kharkiv’s electricity supply and infrastructure was targeted on 16 December, the city could immediately respond. “Power was restored a few hours later with generators kicking in in crucial places where the network restoration took longer. With a resilient effort, the city bounced back and even celebrated 25 December around a Christmas tree in the underground train station,” Sergey said.
This comprehensive digital data base helps to:
- Combine data from different sources about the state of buildings and infrastructure;
- Prepare a range of operational and statistical reports;
- Calculate the costs required for repairs and rebuilding of various parts and segments to ensure maximum benefits from restored services;
- Prioritise restoration work required for the immediate, the medium-term and longer term.
A Memorandum of Understanding signed between the Kharkiv City Council and IBM Ukraine LLC activated the implementation of IBM’s Maximo technology to develop an effective intellectual and digitised asset management base for the city.
Vetasi, the largest Maximo Partner in Europe, Africa and Indonesia, volunteered its technical expertise for this project.
The Internet of Things
The objective of the Maximo Kharkiv project is to create a modern and effective tool for co-ordinating interaction between residents and the municipality in the field of housing and communal services. Vetasi assists in the implementation of digital innovations and technologies such as:
- the Internet of Things (IoT),
- IBM software for city infrastructure and asset management, and
- data analysis and improvement of business processes.
In the bombardments and missile attacks on Kharkiv shortly after the Russian invasion in February 2022, buildings of historical note and a significant percentage of the housing stock were damaged. An estimated half a million inhabitants left. But simultaneously Kharkiv received Ukrainians who fled the almost totally ruined cities and towns like Mariupol as well as residents fleeing from Russian occupied areas such as Kupyansk and Izyum.
And with Ukrainian military successes in liberating large swathes to the east and south, thousands of the original Kharkiv residents have returned as well, resulting in an estimated 1.1 million people in the city.
Of the more than 10,000 multi-apartment residential buildings and over 75,000 single residential houses, by December a total of 3,365 multi-apartment residential buildings were damaged. Of these, 38% suffered medium to heavy damage. More than 1,700 private houses were also damaged.
Asset Damage Calculator
Sergey said the Maximo Kharkiv project has 5 partially overlapping stages:
Stage 1: Capturing and assessing the damage caused by Russian aggression
In this stage, the IBM Maximo Incident System was used to:
- develop a digital system of assets of all buildings and structures in the City of Kharkiv;
- distinguish the extent of damages due to hostilities
- implement a Damage Calculator calculating the damages caused to an asset;
- record required restoration and repair work and to capture repairs done;
- automatically update a reporting system on damaged assets providing an “in time” dashboard;
- exchange data via API with UADamage.
Stage 2: The creation of a Single Digital Database
This database will comprise all the housing fund assets as well as surrounding territory assets. It also involves creating a single system of codes for the city’s assets in the field of housing and communal services.
Digitisation of housing fund assets enables the development of asset cards. In the case of an apartment building, the asset card will rank assets like the different departments, the elevator, the motor and hydraulics of the elevator, the water pressure pump and the heating system, inter alia.
Stage 3: The creation of a management system for communal services
The utility management system is a module based on the IBM Maximo system of incidents and work tasks that allows one to record residents’ appeals and observations of other utility services as incidents and transform that information into a structured work schedule, e.g. emergency repairs, scheduled maintenance tasks as well as major repairs.
The mobile application used by employees in the communal service enables on-the-go capturing of requests and instructions for work, progress on the execution of tasks to increase productivity of employees.
Stage 4: Implementation of an AI algorithm and Kharkiv’s IoT server
An AI-algorithm based on data generated in the asset cards of the multi-apartment buildings (technical characteristics, performed works, open and completed tasks, etc.), will enable real time analytics and recommendations about possible solutions and remedial as well as preventative actions.
Kharkiv’s IoT server is designed to receive streams of input data from a range of IoT devices located in the city’s residential and commercial and industrial areas. This involves electricity and heat meters, light and humidity sensors, etc.
Stage 5: The creation of a Smart House & Yard system of management
Implementation of the Smart House and Yard module enables city residents through interactive services to:
- interact with the city management, communal services and other service companies in the field of housing and communal services;
- receive complete information about the state of own dwellings in electronic form;
- participate in the operational management and development of the apartment building, yard, street;
- promote effective condominiums.
Smart Asset Performance Management
Sergey said the war’s destruction and damage to critical infrastructure intensifies the importance of proper asset management. “Maximising the productivity of undamaged assets and prioritising the repairs and replacement of assets knocked out by the war without having a surplus of spares, not to mention replacements, available, is essential. The need for a digital geo-referenced inventory covering both installed infrastructure and spares is crucial not only for emergency repairs, but also for a smart rebuilt Kharkiv.
“We are glad that we can contribute to a project that will ensure that when the war ends Kharkiv will have a better and smarter asset management platform in place than what existed before the war. That will form the basis for the reconstruction of Kharkiv. Smart Asset Performance Management is our way of reclaiming our future.”
Pavlo Konoplov, Business Development Manager CIS at Vetasi Poland, says:
“We discussed co-operation with the city of Kharkiv even before the start of the war planning digitisation of city services and assets. The outbreak of the war with the relentless destruction intensified sharply the need for a co-ordinated approach to asset management. Priorities and tasks have changed. It became essential to automate the processes of gathering information, documenting and recording the asset destruction. The integration of various databases is critical to generate analytical reports in the for-today mode. We could not stand aside and together with IBM offered our help in solving these tasks. Thanks to the comprehensive support of the IBM company, we deployed the platform in a short period of time – the first data appeared in the system after 2 weeks and the first reports could be generated a month after the start of work.
“To date, we have completed several vital integrations. We are also exploring opportunities for integration with state-wide registries. The developed platform controls input data, aggregates data from various sources, provides reporting both for individual specialists and for the entire city. I am sure that our joint work will become a reliable basis for the restoration of the city of Kharkiv. We have formed a strong project team – city administration specialists, IBM consultants, colleagues from the Polish and Ukrainian offices of Vetasi and we will all work together to achieve this goal.
Together to victory and a smarter and more efficient Kharkiv!
“And the Decree of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine (No. 380 of March 26, 2022) required all cities and towns to develop a register of damages and provide a calculation of repair cost.”
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