“Please service me!” – Is the sort of message that smoke alarms, fire extinguishers, and light bulbs are now able to send to their facility managers. And there’s more: With a click of the mouse, the photovoltaic panel in the digital building can shed light on the agreed energy concept, the lift can reveal its maintenance interval, and the door to the air-lock can name the contact person at the suppliers.

As a pioneer for integrated design with Building Information Modeling (BIM), ATP architects engineers has taught all the building elements that are subject to testing, controlling, and maintenance requirements a common language – and, thus, it has dragged facility management into the digital age. And BIM has finally entered the arena in which it promises to be most beneficial to clients – namely, the operation of buildings.

We discussed all this with the architect Matthias Wehrle, Partner and Managing Director of ATP Zurich.