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  • Mirvac Evicts Paper in Favour of Multimedia Building Inspections

    The Mirvac Group is Australia's leading diversified property group, with more than 30 years of experience in the industry, dealing in property investments, commercial property management and residential property development. Mirvac hotels and resorts have more than 2,500 rooms across Australia and New Zealand, making it one of the largest Australian-owned hotel groups.

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  • "Each property manager is saving approximately four hours a week in the process of gathering and completing tangible reports, which has lead to greater productivity and, ultimately, client satisfaction."


    Gordon Longrigg
    Operations Manager

    The Challenge
    As a market leader in property management, Mirvac identified consistent, high-quality field reports as a critical success factor in the management of its portfolio of high-profile buildings.

    With slow, paper-based reporting processes in place, Mirvac was under increasing pressure to generate regular statistical reports as well as identify and track industry trends relating to maintenance and service providers.

    The lack of technology-based processes was compounded when photographic evidence of damage was needed. The employee would have to first find a camera to take photos and import these into the report, wasting at least an hour on each occasion due to inefficient reporting and recording methods. This amounted to approximately four hours per week per property manager.

    The Solution
    Mirvac turned to Valorem Systems, a solution developer specialising in mobile multimedia data capture and reporting, to provide the answer to its problems. Kevah consists of three interactive components - mobile, desktop and server - enabling users to conduct multimedia inspections in the field with a Zire™ 72 handheld from palmOne.

    With its integrated camera, the Zire 72 allows property managers to take photographs and include them in reports with a date/time stamp. Once information and images have been put into standard and customised inspection fields on the handheld, Kevah allows the user to synchronise the data with a PC at the touch of a button.

    This fully integrated solution is used to capture text and images relating to property aberrations, automatically generating reports on-the-spot. The records are then used for a number of purposes, including tracking damages; planning upkeep and maintenance; and assessing work completed by external contractors and repairers.

    Gordon Longrigg, operations manager, Mirvac said, "All of these processes are now conducted within the time it used to take to locate a camera. This solution has set us free from the paper processes we were previously bound to."

    The Outcome
    With 37 palmOne handhelds being used by Mirvac property managers in the field, reporting processes for the organisation are now more streamlined than ever.

    Not only saving time, the solution also helps Mirvac fulfil desired key objectives such as measuring the type, time and location of damage. In addition, the ability to easily record evidence of contractor performance helps property managers conduct their jobs more efficiently.

    Gordon Longrigg said, "Each property manager is saving approximately four hours a week in the process of gathering and completing tangible reports, which has lead to greater productivity and, ultimately, client satisfaction."

    "Over time we will see the real benefits of Valorem's Kevah on our palmOne handhelds. By analysing our collated data and detecting trends, we expect to be able to take pre-emptive action and alter security rosters and routes to potentially prevent some damage from ever happening," he concluded.

    About palmOne, Inc.
    palmOne, Inc. delivers what matters most to customers - whether a single consumer or company of thousands - enabling users to improve their personal lives and professional productivity through mobile devices and solutions.

    palmOne is the name adopted in October 2003 by Palm, Inc., when it spun off PalmSource, Inc., maker of the Palm OS® platform software, and acquired Handspring, Inc. Uniting the Zire™, Tungsten™ and Treo™ sub-brands, the creation of palmOne launched a new, stronger market leader in handheld computer and communications hardware and software solutions.

    More information about palmOne, Inc., is available at www.palm.com/asia.

    About Mirvac
    The Mirvac Group is a leading diversified property group - listed on the Australian Stock Exchange with a market capitalisation of more than $3 billion - active in property investment and management, property development and hotel management. Established in 1972, Mirvac has 32 years of experience in the property industry and has an unmatched reputation for delivering quality product and services across all of its businesses.

    The Group's residential development division is active in WA, Victoria, NSW and Queensland and is responsible for some of Australia's best residential projects including Newington, Newbury Estate and Walsh Bay in NSW; Arbour on Grey and Cutters Landing in Queensland; Yarra's Edge, The Heath and The Melburnian in Victoria and The Peninsula in WA.

    Mirvac's investment property portfolio is spread across Australia. Mirvac owns and manages commercial office towers, retail centres and industrial properties valued at more than $2.4 billion.

    Mirvac Hotels and Resorts has more than 2,500 rooms under management in Australia and New Zealand, operated predominantly under the Quay West, Quay Grand, Sebel and Citigate Sebel banners, making it one of the largest Australian-owned hotel groups.

    More information is available at www.mirvac.com.au.

    About Valorem Systems Pty Ltd
    Valorem Systems develops solutions for multimedia mobile data capture and reporting. We focus on the 'point of presence' where a company's staff interact with clients, customers and the public. With a Valorem solution, the point of presence staff can gather data once, and move it seamlessly into and through the organisation. Our benchmark platform, Kevah, provides for text, photos, voice, and sketched images to all be captured in one time-date stamped record. The process behind Kevah is patent approved, and a world-first integration of multimedia into handheld data capture.

    For more information see www.valoremsystems.com.