Maintenance of Public Buildings

Mr. Torbjørn Vinje had a presentation of this subject the 10th of June under the IFME World Congress on Municipal Engineering & IPWEA International Public Works Conferenceis. He is CEO in the Norwegian Association of Municipal Engineering. Vinje has worked in the association since 2006. 

The presentation was on behalf of the associations forum in the area of building and property, since nobody from the forum could be present at the congress. Co-author is Jonas Havord, CEO, New Generation Communication.

The purpose of IK-bygg is to uncover the state of public buildings from an health, safety and environmental perspective to meet regulatory demands and legal obligations. It´s a system for Internal Control of the buildings.

Since the launch of the application in 2011 more than 100 out of totally 428 Norwegian municipalities uses it. The succeess has led to better ownership, maintenance and use of public buildings (e.g. schools, kindergardens, town halls etc.).

The word IK-bygg is an abbreviation for safety and health of buildings. The two letter IK stands for Internal Control.

IK-bygg is a simple and user-friendly tool on the web, mobile and tablet that maps and highlight the building's condition and injury risk in terms of health, safety and environment (HSE).

IK-bygg has several advantages:

• You can enter costs for improvements, and thus can IK-bygg be used in the budget; you visualizes maintenance backlog. It becomes easier to communicate and negotiate for needed maintenance when you have to meet the city council, and to get the necessary political support.
  
  In general, politicians often have little conscious of their ownership and management role in municipal building and property. There are very large values they are responsible for, and IK-bygg can create a greater awareness of the role.
  
  The supervisory authorities are now focusing to a greater extent than before on the owners, because they hold the real responsibility. In a new fire regulations the owners are more central; background is that the supervisory authorities want this to be taken more seriously.
• It becomes easier to communicate with residents, tenants, users and press
• It is easier to prioritize and make plans for maintenance, and that reduces long-term risk and unwanted damages
• IK-bygg is also an appropriate tool to communicate with supervisors - both preparation and execution.

At least, but not less: IK-bygg is an excellent tool for benchmarking; the municipality can compare the state of their own buildings with other buildings in the municipality of Norway; this can provide a good basis, maybe the first step to start a new process of change where the buildings condition are improved.

IK-bygg is a tool for owners and operators. It points the way through the jungle of laws and regulations on health, safety and environment (HSE).

IK-bygg consists of a simple and practical checklist answered using traffic lights that maps the condition of your buildings. The checklist helps to clarify the position of responsibility and stimulate cooperation - also with the users of the buildings.

In IK-bygg there are following four roles:

• Owner
• Facility manager
• Caretaker
• User

Each organizational unit in the municipalities can establish the desired number of users. The manager is also responsible for creating buildings and choose who gets access to the individual buildings. The other three roles are regular users who have rights to enter data - such as signing condition of buildings, post comments and post pictures.

IK-bygg encourages collaboration across disciplinary boundaries, and there are more people who can answer questions related to their role, eg. safety representatives and Rector at a school.

The supervisory authorities also contributes actively to revise and update IK-bygg on the current legislation, in addition to its own user group will make suggestions for improvements in the development of the tool.

IK-bygg is supported and promoted by:

• Norwegian Directorate for Building Quality
  Central authority for building regulations.
• Norwegian Directorate for Civil Protection
  Central authority for maintaining full overview of risk and vulnerability in society in general.
• Norwegian Fire Protection Association
  Independent, non-profit foundation that works to achieve no loss of life, health and values caused by fire.
• Norwegian Labour Inspection
  Government supervisory agency that provides information and guidelines on rights and obligations of employers and employees.
• Norwegian Directorate of Health
  Executive agency and competent authority subordinate to the Norwegian Ministry of Health and Care Services.
• KLP
  Leading Norwegian non-life insurance company offering insurance solutions to municipalities and companies/institutions.

It's an big advantage, indeed absolutely necessary to have central authorities and organizations on the team, both with regard to development of the system and to be taken seriously by the market. It's just a non-profit organization like NKF that can get with these actors, so it gives us a unique market position.

Since the start in 2011 today more than 100 out of 428 Norwegian municipalities use IK-bygg (25% market share).

The municipalities using IK-bygg represents 1.5 million inhabitants, or about 1/3 of all municipality buildings in the country. It is most purposes buildings, such as kindergartens, nursing homes, administrative buildings, care buildings, cultural centers and municipal housing.

IK-bygg is a key part of the wheel of the year for internal control, with data collection from January to April, reporting from May to August and budgeting from September to December.

IPWEA_Vinje_120.pdf