Geographical Information System (GIS) can be considered the core of the Interactive Facilities Management Environment (iFaME) framework in managing different facilities on the building bases. This study aims at building a comprehensive geodatabase for different elements of infrastructure facilities and services on the building bases for a selected number of schools and developing a GIS-based iFaME interactive application to manage different facilities at the school level in Kuwait. The iFaME is a two-dimensional/three-dimensional (2D/3D) desktop application. It is intended to take planners, decision makers, and maintenance experts inside the building to provide an interactive GIS platform to manage, visualize, query, maintain, and update the database related to school assets and facilities. The Autodesk Revit software was used to produce 3D building information models (BIM) for the selected schools. It provides accurate geometrical representation of the school building elements in an integrated data environment. The iFaME application is integrated with the Revit BIM models and the STAR-APIC Elyx 3D software solution. With the development of the iFaME applications, the facility managers in the MoE could establish greater control over the space allocation and management, asset management, emergency planning, and other areas of facility management. The school managers and maintenance engineers are considered among the most beneficiaries from this application. The school managers will monitor the maintenance activities all the time, while the maintenance engineers will use the application as a container for maintenance orders, and on the same time to document what they accomplished on daily basis. The iFaME application will reduce the maintenance cost of school assets and facilities in addition to increase their efficiency.
The Interactive Facilities Management Environment (iFaME) is the framework that was used in the National Educational Atlas for Services and Infrastructure (NEASI): Facility Information Infrastructure (FII), phase-II project developed by the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (KISR) for the Ministry of Education (MoE). The first phase of the NEASI covered the use of the Geographical Information System (GIS) technology to build an integrated geodatabase for different components of educational services and infrastructure on the national level. The NEASI facility information infrastructure (FII) second phase was designed to provide the end user in the MoE with the required data to manage the facilities at the micro level within the buildings from many sources and in multiple forms [
・ Build comprehensive multi objective geodatabase for different elements of schools assets and facilities on the building basis for selected schools.
・ Develop a GIS-based interactive application (iFaME) to manage different assets and facilities at the school level.
The iFaME is a cost-effective and robust solution to small and medium business enterprises (SMEs) for managing workspace, asset (furniture and equipment), work force occupancy, and emergency situations in organizations in the context of building space [
Facility Management (FM) represents one of the fastest growing sectors. However, tracking and managing facility effectively are extremely difficult. Designers always use 2D plane graphics to transfer their idea about the needed design in the past, but it is difficult for the amateur designers to understand the design completely in the 2D graphics environment [
According to Vasanth and Viswanathan [
The AutoCAD drawing files were collected, prepared, and organized to extract the required data and then uploaded into the spatial Oracle geodatabase of the iFaME application. The data preparation was concentrated on georeferencing the AutoCAD data to the real coordinates, validating accuracy of the data, and verifying the topological errors like overshoots, undershoots, and spatial relationships with other features. The applied procedures to prepare and convert the AutoCAD files into GIS-ready format [
・ extracting the relevant data from AutoCAD files;
・ converting the extracted data into GIS-ready format and classifying different facilities and assets based on their types;
・ georeferencing all data layers into real world coordinate;
・ applying the topology rules to clear spatial errors in different GIS layers;
・ creating and classifying polygons into different space units, such as classroom, lab, administrative office, and playground; and
・ preparing and loading the final GIS data sets and related feature classes into the iFaME geodatabase.
The results of the system analysis are used in preparing the conceptual, logical, and final geodatabase design. The conceptual geodatabase design supported the process of identification and extraction of the required spatial and non-spatial data from the as-built AutoCAD drawings. The conceptual geodatabase design was followed by the creation of Entity-Relationship (ER) diagram illustrating the relationships between entities in the geodatabase. Then, the final geodatabase was designed and implemented to store the iFaME data sets that prepared as mentioned before [
The 2D/3D GIS iFaME was implemented as a desktop application to integrate facility management, inventory management and GIS tool for users who want to query, update, and visualize facilities in the school level [
In addition to develop the iFaME application, the Autodesk Revit software was used to develop BIM 3D models for selected schools in Kuwait. Revit Architecture has the 2D capabilities of AutoCAD, as well as the 3D modeling design functions. AutoCAD files were used and imported to produce BIM models. Revit MEP was used for the design and modeling of mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems. Revit Structure is a modeling and drafting program that is used to model all types of materials and structural systems in the buildings [
STAR-APIC’s Elyx 3D S/W is a true 3D GIS management solution. The main capabilities of Elyx 3D software are to store, manage, and share the 3D data with direct integration with the GIS spatial Oracle. It is one of the technically strongest 3D GIS solutions in the market; therefore, it was used to present and manage the 3D models of the selected schools in Kuwait. The selected schools are exported to Elyx 3D for better 3D visualization and management. It enables the end users to manage and view the 3D data sets in their real locations and overlay them with the 2D GIS data sets from different sources either from inside Elyx 3D S/W or via the If AME desktop application. In all cases, it enables us to execute the main geoprocessing functions on the 2D and 3D data sets. Finally, the iFaME application was integrated with both the Revit BIM and Elyx 3D applications, so that the end user can switch between the different 2D and related 3D views for better management of school assets and facilities.
The final geodatabase contains twelve main data sets, namely, air conditioning; building (building reference, space unit, furniture, and equipment); clock bell; electricity; firefighting and alarms; water supply; sanitation; security system; sound system; emergency; telecommunication; and site footprint. The number and types of the identified data sets are dependent on the content of the as-built drawings acquired from MoE. Each data set includes its own spatial and non-spatial data to conceptualize and capture the school assets and facilities. For example, the “building” data set contains all space units (e.g., classrooms, labs, and toilets) and building references (e.g., walls, windows, and doors). They are stored in spatial Oracle geodatabase. Then, the iFaME desktop application was connected directly into the original spatial Oracle geodatabase to manage the asset and facility infrastructure of the selected schools.
The framework of the desktop iFaME application contains four layers (
・ Database layer: It uses Oracle 11-g database with spatial extension for iFaME.
・ Management tools layer: It contains three management tools for iFaME, which are facilities management tool for querying and managing facilities of schools, inventory management tool for updating and managing inventory of schools, and GIS tool for measuring the length and area of the facilities of schools.
・ Visualization layer: It provides two ways of visualizing the school facilities in either 2D or 3D, depending on the user’s need and type of analysis being performed. If the user needs 3D representation for specific school, the desktop iFaME application calls the third party application either the Revit or Elyx 3D S/W.
・ Security layer: It controls users and grants users specific authorities, such as updating, deleting and managing database and application tools. Three user groups are planned, administrators having all the authorities, data owners having data updating and deleting authorities, and data viewers having view and query authorities only.
The main functions and user interface of the iFaME application was illustrated in
Abu Halifa high school was selected to demonstrate the result of the iFaME application.
The air conditioning (AC) system in the ground floor of the school is illustrated in
Also,
Thus, the iFaME desktop is a powerful application to monitor and manage different assets and facilities inside the school, such as furniture, equipment, space unit, AC, sanitation network, water supply network, and electricity network. The maintenance process in the MoE is classified into two types: 1) Partial maintenance; and 2) radical maintenance. The partial maintenance includes the periodic maintenance as well as any sudden maintenance needed for any component of the school. The radical maintenance means that the school will be removed and re-built again. So, the maintenance engineers of MoE will be able to manage the different types of maintenance activities inside each school using the iFaME desktop application. The decision makers in the MoE level, educational zones level and on the school level will be benefit from the iFaME to manage the maintenance of school buildings and related facilities and assets in a very easy and professional way.
The 3D presentation of the selected school buildings were carried out using two different S/W, namely; Revit Structure and STAR-APIC Elyx 3D. The process of creating the 3D models of the school buildings was based mainly on the as-built AutoCAD drawings.
The ability of STAR-APIC Elyx 3D software was figured out also to store, manage, and share the 3D data with direct integration with the GIS spatial Oracle database and iFaME desktop application. The captured GIS
sample data of Sabah Al-Salem district, Mubarak Al-Kabeer educational zone were imported as shape files into the Elyx 3D and its spatial Oracle database, and it contains schools, roads, parcels, storm water manholes, and storm water pipeline layers. Using Elyx 3D processor, all the AutoCAD files of Al-Imam Al-Shafee primary school located on the same district were imported into its spatial Oracle database (
The 3D symbology was used to define interactive object representation parameters of Al-Imam Al-Shafee primary school such as color, thickness, pattern, texture, and the 3D model for different school geometry. Google Sketch up S/W was used to create extrusion of the first floor of the school building based on the 3D scene of Elyx3D (
The developed GIS 2D/3D iFaME application is a reasonable framework to manage the different assets and facilities in MoE. This framework could help MoE to have clear documentation, inventory, and control over all school assets and facilities. The developed geodatabase on the building bases and the related iFaME application could support the process of managing assets and facilities on the micro level within the school building. The facility managers could establish greater control over the space allocation, asset, and facility maintenance, and
management, in addition to other areas of school property management.
The iFaME application is a proper tool to improve furniture and equipment utilization rates, which may reduce capital expenditures of their management. It could track and manage asset ownership and use, increase organizational accountability, and promote redeployment opportunities. The iFaME is considered a coherent pro- cess for integrating asset planning, acquisition, tracking, disposal, and investment recovery acquisition and/or disposition practices to increase the school efficiency and achieve superior financial results. Also, it is a reasonable means to improve data accuracy of asset registry, increase asset utilization, and optimize asset acquisition and disposal decisions within an overall capital plan of each school.
The research team from KISR and MoE has already started a more in-depth research to study the possibility of exporting the BIM 3D models into a real BIM-GIS 3D environment. The research is aimed at building full GIS 3D geometry and topology to enable the user to run the main GIS functionality on different school elements on the third dimension domain. The positive preliminary results from the ongoing research work would offer a great possibility toward building a real BIM-GIS framework that could lead to a paradigm shift in the facility management on the micro level.
The authors would like to acknowledge the Ministry of Education (MoE) in Kuwait and Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (KISR) for providing financial assistance to the NEASI project-phase II (SP004S). Special thanks are due to the GIS Section in KISR and project team of MoE for their input and valuable contribution to the project.