An ordinary real estate company with unordinary ideas

Willhem

With close to two million square meters of properties to manage, Willhem is one of Sweden's largest housing companies. A tough challenge that requires solid tools.

"Everyone wants to go home"

Willhem is one of Sweden's largest real estate companies with a property value of approximately SEK 57 billion. With the challenge of managing 1.9 million square meters in an uncertain time, you need to be solution-oriented and dare to invest.

- We like to say that we are an ordinary real estate company with unordinary ideas. Our goal is for our work to make such an impact that people talk about what they did before and after Willhem, says Sebastian with a smile.

Their dedicated work is even reflected as a little pun in the company's name.

Everyone should be proud of and enjoy their home - Everyone wants to go home ("Vill hem" means "Wants [to go] home" in Swedish)

Sebastian-Borjesson-Hakan-Jernberg-Willhem

Håkan Jernberg, Energy Controller & Sebastian Börjesson, Controller Manager, Wilhem

Highly set goals

To take responsibility and contribute to sustainable development, Willhem has set several goals regarding energy consumption and emissions. In 2012, the goal was set to halve the amount of purchased energy by 2030. In 2018, a goal was also set to be net zero from direct emissions by 2030 and to also halve indirect emissions by 2030. Achieving such high goals requires a lot of follow-up and solid controlling work. To make this possible, there is a collection of reports that make it easy to collect the required information. There are monthly reports per location, where everyone has their own responsibility for results, but of course also reports at company level.

Since different locations face different challenges, the goals are set with location-specific measures.Each location has its own project volumes, properties and conditions. Here, INSIKT facilitates as Willhem can easily switch between helicopter perspective and detailed focus. Comments also play a key role here. The localities comment on all changes and own the issue themselves in their locality. In this way, they can quickly and easily follow up the effects of the investments.

- They can quickly see that something is happening and that the administration can react to it. We can't just put a heat pump in a building and say 'good luck', we have to see what effect it has and work accordingly," explains Sebastian.

The electricity crisis

The importance of site-specific work and the difference in conditions in different locations is particularly evident when looking at energy consumption, which is a very high priority for Willhem. To overcome rising electricity prices, Willhem has taken several different measures. However, a measure that is suitable in one location may not be suitable in another.

- For example, now that electricity prices are rising in SE4, the measures in the Stockholm area may not be applicable further south because electricity is too expensive. On the other hand, it may be more profitable to install solar cells in those areas. Even if you get the same amount of electricity, the savings can be higher and the income higher if you sell something, explains Håkan.

Sebastian also highlights the analytical power of being able to compare data from different sources. In this way, they can, for example, analyze the net operating income in relation to the consumption figures and gain new insights and a deeper understanding of the relationships between them.

- A project may have reduced consumption very well, but in terms of costs we may not have achieved the outcome we wanted as a result of some other factor that we can then delve into. It gives us a better understanding of what works well and what doesn't and how it differs from place to place. It is not possible to have a method for all houses, but specific adaptations to the situation are always required, says Sebastian.

The way forward

It is clear that Willhem wants to continue in the same good direction and has lots of ideas for its future use of INSIKT. Energy prices are also making themselves felt here . Since several energy suppliers have changed their pricing model so that poweris a larger part of the cost , this has become a priority issue. In several cases, customers' annual cost is based on a few days when power was at its highest. This means that you can get a very high cost that also comes a little blind if you do not have good planning and follow-up.

- If we can reduce the power output of a plant by, for example, 50KWa few specific days a year , there is a lot of money to be saved. In this way, we can keep costs down despite these changes. If we have this type of information in INSIKT, we can be on top of things all the time. We don't have to ask around for information, everything is updated in one place, says Håkan.

- We want to continue the shift away from manual tasks and move towards value-creating controlling. No copying between different sources or compiling simple data. That's just a waste of time and does not create value. Instead, we should spend time on what actually creates value, Sebastian agrees.

1. Being able to build what you need
The ability to build everything how you want it if you want to. You can really twist and turn everything.

2. Easy to understand for everyone
Being able to visualize data in an intuitive and neat way. We have mixed with project managers, operating technicians and engineers who have a very good understanding of energy issues, but at the same time we have an administration that may not be as well versed in that subject and being able to produce a report that speaks their language is very valuable.

3. Lots of great features
All the little features that make things easier. Portal reports, dynamic reports and commenting functions - trivial things that help enormously.

4. Aggregate and drill down
It's easy to aggregate numbers and just as easy to get all the way down to a specific measurement point.

5. Accessible to all
The ability to make the numbers accessible to everyone. You shouldn't have to be a numbers geek or Excel professional to be able to absorb the information.

Analysis

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