Nobody’s happy except the litigation lawyers!

You can’t ban ice cream cones from the centre – your tenants sell them. Nor can you follow every three year old around with a mop and bucket. But what you can do is set such stringent risk avoidance and maintenance KPIs that the insurance company accepts the risk at an affordable premium.

To achieve this, you not only have to set a rigid timetable of frequent inspections and cleaning tours of garbage areas, pedestrian traffic areas  and bathrooms, you also have to police it to the extent that you can stand up in court and provide proof that the area in question was inspected and maintained on schedule.

Not surprisingly, electronic surveillance and reporting have long been used to keep tabs on return point maintenance tours – but the most sophisticated systems to date use a pen or wand that must be touched to a reporting point by the touring employee to register, introducing a human error factor.

This is the premise behind a new RFID-based return point tracking solution that is designed to eliminate human error. The new kwiklook Tours solution was jointly developed by leading RFID developer Protrac ID and property management system specialist FutureIT, and can either be installed as a stand alone product, or incorporated as an extension to the well-established FutureIT kwiklook facilities operations management suite.

keep it simple. Make it foolproof.

An automated docking system for kwikloook data collectors (wands/probes) makes it all work painlessly. Designed by Protrac iD, each mobile-phone-size receiver simply slots into its socket at the end of the shift, and the data is automatically downloaded while the unit is recharged for the next shift.

The kwiklook Tours solution is both simple and effective. Long range, active RFID radio transmitters are installed in the ceilings above garbage bins and restrooms and at regular intervals throughout the pedestrian areas.

Cleaning staff, security staff and supervisors wear a radio receiver the size of a mobile phone  clipped to their belts or pockets, and each time they pass a transmitter it records the location, date and the time. At the end of the shift, all the employee has to do is drop the receiver into a slot in the docking unit and the recorded data is automatically uploaded and the unit recharged.

The system can be installed in a matter of hours, staff training is simple, and the fixed transmitters themselves do not require mains power (batteries have an operating life of 5 years, transmitting 24 x 7), so not to require messy, time consuming installation and connection to mains power. Best of all, it is a passive system, so the data is recorded automatically and operator failure is eliminated. All the employee has to do is do their job!

now successfully installed and operating in five major NSW shopping centres.

The first kwiklook Tours return point tracking system, was installed at Carlingford Court, a large GPT owned property  in Sydney’s North West with 29,500 square meters of retail space. The system is now installed in four more properties in the Sydney Region – Rouse Hill Town Centre, Westpont Blacktown, Ashfield and French's Forest.

kwiklook Tours has an advantage over conventional return point tracking systems because it is a hands-free, automated system and therefore offers greater reporting certainty. "It is both effective and competitively priced”, says Brian Smith of FMS, “and there has been a high level of acceptance from our staff”

delivering tighter property management systems in a Sydney landmark office tower.

kwiklook Patrol will be installed at Citigroup Centre, 2 Park St, Sydney, situated between George and Pitt Streets. The building is jointly owned by GPT, Jones Lang LaSalle and Macquarie Office Trust.

kwiklook Tours was primarily developed as a solution for retail centres, where public liability insurance is a significant part of the overhead, but it is also finding favour in other areas of commercial property management.

Citigroup Centre at  2 Park Street is  a landmark Sydney office tower comprising 41 levels of office space, totaling 72,631 square metres, with 256 car parking spaces and a  a four-level retail podium connecting to Town Hall Station and the Darling Harbour Monorail. The new kwiklook Tours RFID system is installed here to ensure the efficiency of security and cleaning functions in the retail podium, underground parking areas and shared tenant areas.

Mark Baldwin, National  Operations Manager of GPT, who own the Carlingford Court site and are major shareholders in 2 Park Street, is supportive of the kwiklook Patrol system says says Baldwin, “since it delivers all the property maintenance data we want from one integrated software program rather than having to juggle separate programs for separate functions. The kwiklook tours return point system is a natural extension to the suite, with the added advantage of being a passive, ‘no hands’ system that virtually eliminates human error.”

The software currently in pilot-testing, and due for release over May and June of 2009, is easily enabled and operational on supported devices running Windows Mobile operating systems.

See the full list of functions that mobile kwiklook is offering: click here.

Federation Square evaluated a range of software options before deciding on kwiklook.

Mark Bullen, Operations Manager of Federation Square, commented that "other systems, while providing some of the functionality we were looking for did not provide the intergrated functionality of the kwiklook suite of applications"

kwiklook has provided an integrated solution with user friendly interface that meet Federation Square's operational requirements. For more information see - Case Study Federation Square.

kwiklook Enterprise enables an organisation to centrally manage its facilities from one location. Specifically; records, parameters, reporting and analysis for multiple facilities that may be located remotely, are controlled centrally.

kwiklook Enterprise Manager provides the tools to manage global reporting parameters yet retains the ability to allow assignment of individual records, such as staff, service providers, tenants and other local information to individual and/or groups of facilities.

Features and benefits of the kwiklook Enterprise include:

• centralised reporting - central setup of global reporting parameters ensures consistent reporting across facilities.
• flexible architecture - central or local setup of staff, service provider and all other records addresses the need for versatility.
• easy management - enterprise manager uses drag-and-drop interface for easy ongoing administration of your records.
• efficient and cost effective implementation when new facilities come online.
• functional and organisational consistency of operations information is core to the efficiency of an organisation.

Easy-to-use, secure and affordable, kwiklook is an ideal solution for managing your security services and can integrate and share information with other departments within your organisation. At ASIAL 2005, show attendees got to see this technology in action first hand. ASIAL website linklink to ASAIL website.