Hyvinkää is a town and municipality in Southern Finland with a population of approximately 46 000 inhabitants. The city manages a gross area of 220 000 square meters with the help of the Optimaze system that the city implemented in 2012.

Optimaze makes decision-making related to space usage more transparent, and serves as a shared space for facility information. The system also aids in budgeting.

Managing space information

The aim of Hyvinkää’s implementation was to gain exact information of the amount of space as well as to import all buildings’ floor plans into the system. During the implementation, all paper blueprints were re-drawn into an electronic form.

The city’s space information is now collected into a single system from which space users and owners can share space-related information and floor plans. The system’s reporting features facilitate analyzing and comparing space information.

– Maintaining and managing the city’s property portfolio would be difficult without Optimaze, evaluates Mikko Silvast, the Facility Services Manager of Hyvinkää. – Thus far, Optimaze has been used for instance to compile space cost budgets as well as to calculate internal rents. Using the system increases transparency, as users can view rents and their formation according to the users’ reading rights.

Optimizing space utilization

– In Hyvinkää, facility investments and maintenance comprise a relatively small share of the city’s economy. Space usage cannot be immoderately tightened because the law sets demands on, for example, the size of day-care groups and school classes and thus on the size of certain spaces, Silvast says. – Improving space efficiency is our way to respond to the saving goals of the municipality. I believe that we can achieve best overall savings by setting operational and space efficiency goals that are mutual with other municipal actors. The city’s economy cannot be saved by improving space efficiency only.

The city of Hyvinkää has also followed its space efficiency by carrying out a space usage measurement at its city hall. In the future, the city of Hyvinkää plans to use Optimaze also to manage information related to building maintenance. The software could also be used to monitor the environmental effects of the city buildings.