by Brianna Crandall — June 26, 2019 — SmartCSM, a provider of CMMS-like cloud-based building and facilities management (FM) software that launched in 2018, announced in recent months that its digital mapping and data management solutions have been selected by six Southern California cities, including the City of Manhattan Beach, City of Inglewood, City of Santa Monica, City of Carson, City of Torrance and City of Beverly Hills. The South Bay-located company’s commercial building data management platform is touted as the “Google Maps” of accessing and viewing a building’s electrical and mechanical infrastructure. It was created to enhance productivity by reducing risk and cost of maintaining paper records and is helping facility management teams for local governments in the region work smarter and more efficiently while mitigating risk.
SmartCSM enables FMs to view their entire building’s infrastructure on a smart device or computer from anywhere they have internet access. Image courtesy SmartCSM
The SmartCSM site explains how its software is similar to but different from both building information modeling (BIM) and computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software: “Whereas BIM is used for construction, SmartCSM is used for transitioning a customer from new construction to daily management of infrastructure in their buildings. SmartCSM differs from asset management tools in [that] the solution provides [an] integrated view of building infrastructure. SmartCSM is different than CMMS in that it focuses on deeper infrastructure data management in an interactive digital plan room. The platform is a complimentary option to your CMMS system.”
Craig Caryl, CEO of SmartCSM, stated:
Much like electronic health records that have proved to be key to increasing of quality health care, SmartCSM is paving the way for cities and municipalities to successfully and safely transition critical facility management records into a single, dynamic and visual data management platform. I credit our investors for believing in our product and for recognizing the need to create a solution capable of eliminating so many of the risks and costs associated with maintaining old or inaccurate paper building records.
A participant in the South Bay Small Business Development Center program and recipient of the 2017 Outstanding Small Business Award from El Camino College Small Business Development Center, SmartCSM is engineered to enable building owners and facilities managers to vastly reduce operational waste, increase accountability and reduce risk by bringing its entire electrical infrastructure onto a visual and interactive database or digital plan room. This provides FMs with the ability to view their entire building’s infrastructure on a smart device or computer from anywhere they have internet access.
Sean Roberts, facilities supervisor for the City of Manhattan Beach, remarked:
We’ve found excess time wasted in-field sorting old and inaccurate documentation before we can even service a building. SmartCSM helps reduce that waste by helping us convert and digitally organize our plans and documentation, thus reducing work time and mitigating risk. In addition, they put us on a direct path to citywide BIOT, Building Internet of Things.
SmartCSM recently closed a $1.5 million funding round, led by Boston-based real estate tech fund Tamarisc Ventures, that also included Los Angeles-based firms Stage Venture Partners and Okapi Venture Capital. The investment is helping the company accelerate the digitization of facility operations across cities and other major market verticals, helping usher many aging facilities away from paper into visual, single-click management of their commercial infrastructure.
Shidan Adlparvar, facilities superintendent for the City of Santa Monica, commented:
We view the future of the City of Santa Monica’s facilities management as digital and connected. SmartCSM is helping us convert our plans into a visual, connected and interactive database encompassing our buildings and facilities infrastructure information.
FM teams can diffuse the electrical or mechanical disruptions in their buildings by bringing the building infrastructure data online with SmartCSM. They can save time by:
- Enjoying quicker access across city services infrastructure, with accurate identification of affected areas, assets and people;
- Tracking all in-field technicians’ work online;
- Improving access to data by transferring paper to digital management of disparate buildings;
- Establishing better shutdown procedures to optimize operations;
- Reducing time in the field wasted attempting to access lost, inaccurate or old records; and
- Preventing mechanical failures vs. reacting to them.
With more and more city governments and organizations of all types partnering with SmartCSM to deploy its solutions, facilities teams and FMs will be using the technology to gain greater visibility into their entire real estate portfolio and enjoy more consistent levels of facility operation and service quality, says the company.
For more information about the SmartCSM solution, visit the company’s website. To view an introductory video, visit YouTube.
