With more than 95 stores, restaurants, a fitness center and a library, the Schönhauser Allee Arcaden shopping center in Berlin offers a successful shopping experience. mfi Shopping-Center Management GmbH (mfi) is responsible for managing the property. Their tasks include letting, marketing, tenant support and maintenance of the building and the associated infrastructure. mfi’s property management is also responsible for the property’s accounting and service charge billing, which includes consumption cost billing.
The challenge
Reading meter values visually at the end of the month, typing them into Excel tables by hand, printing them out and comparing them – this no longer seemed up-to-date to the operator. They wanted an efficient way of collecting data with little (personnel) effort and the ability to compare that data easily.
The Solution
Since March 2020, consumption data has been collected automatically in collaboration with F&E Service GmbH Leipzig and stored in the cloud using VertiGIS FM. The VertiGIS FM energy management tool is used to read the meters.
All required evaluations run automatically: VertiGIS FM reports deviations and documents them. The system also reminds users of upcoming deadlines such as maintenance, expiring calibration periods or deviations in meter values that still need to be evaluated.
Building services can immediately access all meters online, read out meter readings in real time, if necessary, compare the previous year’s consumption with current consumption, create reports themselves or edit system data. In no time at all, billing values are created in the SAP output list at the end of the year. This contains all the necessary information such as meter changes, meter defects, tenant changes, anomaly evaluations or meter information, right down to the metering point number, with data from the last twelve months.
VertiGIS FM can be used to display, evaluate and compare annual consumption in figures and diagrams. By adjusting the data with degree day figures and operating days, consumption can be raised to a comparative level and thus provide information about actual deviations. VertiGIS FM evaluates all meter readings once a day. This means that values can be compared monthly on the key date and targeted measures can be taken in the event of deviations.
By reading the meters several times a day, defective meters are quickly identified and can be repaired or replaced. This creates almost 100% plausibility and legal certainty for consumption cost billing. Reading, transmission, interpretation and rounding errors are ruled out.
The Result
Faster, easier and clearer – the building services staff are delighted with the possibilities that VertiGIS FM offers. And above all: high-quality, complete reports are now available in significantly less time, making meaningful comparisons possible in the first place. An alarm system also detects problems much faster. Laborious and time-consuming visual readouts, editing Excel files, manual troubleshooting and managing data in folder structures are definitely a thing of the past at Schönhauser Allee Arcaden.
All Customer Stories