In 2018 Finavia established a new strategy for managing location information for the upcoming five years. At the same time the collaboration with Gravicon grew more; the goal was to receive more intelligent information that could support the operative side of the organization. With Information Management the quality of the information has increased, it is more reliable and commonly understandable.

Eeva-Maria Viljakainen is working in the IT-department as location information manager. Her responsibilities include taking care of the development of the location information, internally and externally.

- The information demands in an airport resemble a small city, there are multiple information usage purposes. That is the main reason why the operative side of activities is so important, we operate mainly with the mindset that we are looking for smart improvements that will be beneficial for us in the operative side, says Eeva-Maria Viljakainen from Finavia.

Toni Teittinen is the BIM Manager taking care of the information management process with Finavia. Toni describes the key thing being the process development, digitalization being the motivator for this.

- It has not been the meaning that we just want to digitalize existing things and do our work as we have done it before. This is one of the key things that we try to adapt and progress at Finavia, describes Toni.

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Toni Teittinen is one of the leading BIM specialists in Finland, he emphasizes that constant process development is the key factor for organizational success.

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What were the main issues that you wanted to solve with Gravicon?

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Keyword in this is the process management through life-cycle of information – how the information is produced in a way that it would serve the users.

- We have recognized that information management as a service suits for us: now we are able to see our processes and determine the information level of different data-flows, in the depth we hope to. Life-cycle and process management helps us to provide more informative data also at the same time reducing the risks. We can trust the information; everyone can use it and it can be found in the same place. Additional value for our cooperation with Gravicon has been that they have multiple years of experience of this through previous cases, we don’t have that, says Eeva-Maria.

Toni sees this as an advantage of Gravicon:

- Our role has been recognizing different using purposes of the information and determine to the ones producing it the form and the processes behind it. Finavia has done remarkable strategic groundwork for these matters and have recognized the patterns before. I challenge our potential clients to think that could there be room for being more proactive instead of putting out fires that were not expected because of the lack of process management.

- Exactly. For example, document coordinator examines that the documents are produced for certain document cards but is not reviewing the content itself. Information management takes this to the next level, Elina complies.

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Finavia location information manager Eeva-Maria Viljakainen thinks that is important to produce information in a way that it will serve the users of it. Life-cycle thinking is essential.

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Why should organizations take advantage of information management as a part of their general information development?

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As an external partner, Gravicon challenges to think and see different execution models from a life-cycle point of view.

- Otherwise, the material would be on an external hard drive under paper stacks, and we would wonder has something been done and when. Gravicon challenges us, provides resources and takes care that we receive information with good quality and easily accessible. We would not have these kinds of resources ourselves, says Eeva-Maria.

- On the contractor side, it has been difficult to deliver the actual model. Therefore, it is essential from the very beginning of the message to be in understandable format. When starting a project, it is usually seen as not that important and not enough attention is focused on it. Now we have knowledge about how the information is being used and it increases the motivation to produce information in the form determined in the beginning, says Eeva-Maria.

-Piloting different things is essential, because with it we have something concrete to support the planning. Last year we finished larger information management project, which included different documenting phases and information content standards described in a clear format, explains Eeva-Maria.

The airport resembles a small city, having different information usage purposes all around it.

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How has your activities changes since starting information management process with Gravicon?

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-We now have common information content demands and demands for phases of information production. We have also been able to take advantages of different BIM models in our business. We now have platforms to review information and we can share content easily to everyone, says Eeva-Maria.

-This was the goal and its is very valuable that the demands have been set. It is important to find the information that has positive effect to the business side of things. Demands are not explained in a form” “produce everything” or “produce limited amount of information”. Now when we can divide the parts of information we really need, that is the real benefit. For example, from drawings you can see that the walls have been declared to be certain size, but when the construction worker arrives to the site and takes the data model with him, the information should be exact. There is the real value, declaires Toni.

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Do you think the construction industry has taken the advantages of digitalization?

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Eeva-Maria Viljakainen thinks that there are still steps to be made, but it is not about the platforms or tools. It is more about how the organizations are able to make changes to their current processes.

-Everything is about change management or progressing it. The environment will develop, many of the planning industries have still lots of potential hidden, Eeva-Maria analyses.

Toni Teittinen explains that the discussion regarding digitalization usually wraps around BIM. In a larger scale it is more about adapting to new processes.

-The benefit comes from taking advantages from the digital information. Examining the information through an intelligent data model. I think many organizations could improve this part drastically.

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Helsinki-Vantaa BIM models are used in the maintenance of it.

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Read more about Information Management in Gravicon

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More information about Information Management at Finavia: 

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Toni Teittinen, BIM Specialist

toni.teittinen@gravicon.fi