Tech Talk

Tech Talk: Fexillon

Operating Healthy and Safe Buildings

Fexillon support Environmental, Health and Safety compliance for owner operators, providing access to critical information, to monitor potential risk and make smarter decisions to prevent incidents, creating a healthy, safe and compliant built environment.

Fexillon help owner operators and their project teams to digitise their data, processes and reporting so they can have real-time access to their asset information, streamlining collaboration, driving productivity, managing information delivery and giving owner operators real control over their data.

Taking Control of Data BIM for FM and Operations

In many cases Facilities Management (FM) and operations teams are handed over the Building Information Model files without being engaged earlier in the BIM Process. Fexillon ensures the BIM process supports the client’s asset operations and maintenance.

The collection and disclosure of accurate sustainability data from multiple sources enables organisations to understand the environmental impact of their assets and processes, reducing carbon footprint and creating a more sustainable built environment.

Targeting Environmental Sustainability Goals

Continuous innovation - digital twin

Fexillon is continuously enhancing their technology and processes to support Owner Operators and their Operational requirements. Fexillon Twin is a complete digital twin solution, a fully integrated extension of the Fexillon Platform providing access to core maintainable assets and real-time building performance and ESG data.

A Digital Twin is an exact replica of the physical environment.

It combines rich and complex data from a wide variety of sources, enabling the building to adapt to the needs and requirements of the occupants and the building owner, whilst reducing the operational costs and environmental impact.

Fexillon Twin provides a RESET® accredited platform, IoT sensors, and edge devices to enable the live and constant building commissioning towards the internationally recognised standard.

Owner and their operations teams see a real-time reflection of operational requirements; they can track the past and current building performance, monitoring the health of the asset's environment and predict the future maintenance needs.

Energy and Water usage monitoring for example is key for identifying waste and inefficiencies.

Indoor Air Quality monitoring provide valuable information on key viral transmission and survivability factors to reduce the viral spread, as well as improve the air quality and boost staff and visitor performance and wellbeing.

Partnership with our clients

Children’s Health Ireland The National Children’s Hospital is the most significant capital investment project in the healthcare system undertaken in Ireland.

Children’s Health Ireland Facilities Management (CHI FM) has appointed Fexillon as the Digital Construction Handover Information specialist to provide their expertise to manage the hospital’s critical building handover information throughout all stages of its lifecycle.

On behalf of CHI FM, Fexillon engaged with the design and construction teams through the Soft Landings approach, coordinating the digital construction handover information delivery for the two urgent care centres, Connolly and Tallaght, that was made available to FM and Operations from day 1 of handover.

Interoperability & traceability Fexillon in partnership with GS1 Ireland help clients to implement GS1 standards for item identification and tracking, enabling the sharing of unique data about objects, their history, location and maintenance needs.

In collaboration with Children’s Health Ireland (CHI), Fexillon and GS1 Ireland developed a proof-of-concept case study on delivery and use of interoperable data at CHI.

Microsoft Fexillon have been working with Microsoft on their Data Centre build programme since 2007 and their platform is now supporting sites across 7 countries in Europe. The Fexillon Platform and support services allow each data centre build to be handed over digitally to the Owner enabling automation and dashboard reporting of digital workflows that engage the supply chain, Construction, Design and Operations teams to approve Data Centre information prior to completion. This ensure operational readiness and knowledge transfer as the facility is handed over from Development to Operations.

Digital twins & decarbonisation Fexillon is collaborating with Microsoft in the development and implementation of a range of solutions including Digital Twins, Mixed Reality utilising HoloLens technology and Building Information Modelling (BIM) integration. Fexillon is a Microsoft Independent Software Vendor listed on Azure marketplace.

Fexillon are utilising Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform to support interactive digital replicas of Microsoft’s built infrastructure, allowing for the realtime management of assets and leading to greater operational efficiencies, while leveraging the security benefits of the Microsoft Cloud.Microsoft Director of IoT and sustainability says: ‘The built environment has a huge opportunity to transform, to decarbonise, and I really believe that both Microsoft and Fexillon can play an important role there.

‘The level of impact that we’re seeing and the outcomes in areas like indoor air quality, digital twin, reducing operational emissions through things like building energy management solutions is really helping us to decarbonise the sector together.’

Fexillon supports a number of leading blue-chip companies across Ireland, the UK, Europe and US; including Microsoft, Children’s Health Ireland, JE Dunn Construction, University of Strathclyde, and more. Fexillon are collaborating with and supporting owner operators and their project teams, rethinking digital processes in respect of their productivity, environmental impact, and health and safety. www.fexillon.com

safety

The 31st National Irish Safety Organisation / Northern Ireland Safety Group (NISO/NISG) Annual Safety Awards took place at a special ceremony in Galway at which the Supreme Safety Award winner for 2022, sponsored by Irving Oil Whitegate Refinery, was announced as Designer Group for the second year in a row.

The Supreme Safety Award is presented to the organisation that has shown consistently good or continuously improving health and safety performance over a number of years and an outstanding contribution to occupational safety, health and welfare during the previous year.

Valued

The Awards are highly valued and regarded among health and safety professionals throughout the island of Ireland.

Other awards presented on the night include the Safety Representative of the Year Award 2022 in association with The Cpl Institute.

The joint winners of the Safety Representative of the Year Award for 2022 were Kevin Corcoran, Kiernan Structural Steel and Aoife O’Leary, Baxter Healthcare Irish Manufacturing Operation.

The Runner Up prize was awarded to Ejovi Atano, Energia Huntstown Bioenergy. The Healthy Workplace Award, sponsored by Healthy Ireland, was won by Glenveagh Properties PLC. The Healthy Workplace Award recognises the commitment of workplaces

ABOVE: (L-R) Harry Galvin, President, NISO; Damien English TD, Minister for Business, Employment and Retail; Derek Murphy, Head of Environmental Health & Safety, Designer Group.

Designer Group wins All Ireland Supreme Safety Awards 2022

who promote health and wellbeing as a core element of the Health and Safety agenda.

The Occupational Health Award, supported by the Health and Safety Authority (HSA) and the Health and Safety Executive for Northern Ireland (HSENI), was won by Bon Secours Hospital Dublin.

The Driving for Work Award

ABOVE: Jones Engineering ABOVE: Glenveagh Properties

safety

was won by Acacia Facilities Management Ltd.

The awards, which demonstrate the positive and proactive culture of safety management in organisations, were supported by the Health and Safety Authority, Health and Safety Executive for Northern Ireland, Healthy Ireland and Irving Oil Whitegate Refinery.

ABOVE: Cork City Council

Conference

The 58th Annual NISO Health and Safety Conference, which preceded the safety awards ceremony, was sponsored by Ayrton Group (Gold sponsors); BioThrive Ltd. and SignsInc (Silver Plus Sponsors); Amon Electronics Ltd., Glenveagh Properties PLC, Jones Engineering Group and PM Group (Silver sponsors); DB Schenker and Weltec Engineering Ltd. (Bronze sponsors).

ABOVE: Weltec Engineering Ltd.

Damien English, Minister of State for Business, Employment and Retail, along with Harry Galvin, NISO President and Ashleigh Birkett, Chair, NISG, presented awards to over 100 organisations from all around the island of Ireland.

The Gold Award was won by Actavo (Ireland), the Silver Award by Winthrop Technologies Ltd. and the Bronze Award by Jones Engineering Group.

ABOVE: Winthrop Technologies Ltd.

The Excellence in Safety Award, which is presented to organisations that consistently achieved a high standard safety award for more than fifteen

ABOVE: Actavo

years, representing their continuous commitment to health and safety in their organisation, was won by Actavo (Ireland) Ltd. and Designer Group.

Exceptional

A number of Exceptional High Achiever awards were presented to organisations that consistently achieved a high standard safety award for more than ten years, representing their continuous commitment to health and safety in their organisation.

Recipients of this award include Acacia Facilities Management, BAM Ireland, Cork City Council, Fingal County Council, GMC Utilities Group Ltd., John Paul Construction, John Sisk and Son (Holdings) Ltd., Jones Engineering Group, Leo Lynch, Merit Medical Ireland Ltd., PM Group, TLI Group Ltd., W&H Alexander Ltd. and Weltec Engineering Ltd.

Expressions of interest for the 2023 safety awards can be emailed to awards@niso.ie. Register with NISO / NISG to receive details of the 2023 Awards when available.

Safety

An international provider of choice for innovative and sustainable engineering solutions, Designer Group is this years’ National Irish Safety Organisation (NISO) Supreme Safety Award winner, for the second year in a row – an historical first for a contractor.

The highest accolade presented annually at the prestigious event, this award is recognition for the positive health and safety culture embraced by Designer Group.

Borne from celebrating team diversity, and a genuine interest in investing in people’s careers, Designer Group’s enduring success is shaped around its values – Safe, Trust, Respect, Challenge and Deliver – which provide the foundation for growth, inseparably woven into the organisation’s mission and strategy.

Head of EHS, Derek Murphy, outlined the unwavering commitment to deliver best-in-class industry standards throughout the organisation:

‘Our people and supply chain partners proactively deliver safety as a core company value, ensuring everyone works safe and goes home healthy.

‘Participating in the NISO awards, provides a performance showcase and contributes to externally auditing our management systems, giving us a benchmark against our industry.

‘We were also one of two companies who accepted the Excellence in Safety Award, presented to those consistently achieving high standard awards for over fifteen years.’

Designer Group - safety as a core value

It's all about our people

The Designer Group safety programme sees more than the employee; it notices the individual, protecting health and wellbeing, and promoting this holistically.

The past twelve months have seen the completion of 2 new management and talent development programmes, expanding leadership capabilities, encouraging a positive ‘management by walking around’ culture, and supporting 2-way engagement.

This year also saw the introduction of a new talent review process, ‘Performance Excellence’.

Employees were asked to set personal objectives that contribute to the company’s core values system, demonstrating a powerful and tangible link between behaviour and achievement.

A number of other wellness and wellbeing initiatives, including the provision of cost of living supports, financial planning and management advice, and events such as ‘Family Fun Day’s’ continue to promote an holistic approach, particularly after the long restrictions posed by the Covid-19 pandemic.

There are further plans to expand wellness resources for the coming year, via a new employee benefits portal.

Looking to the future

Collaboration is central to its continuous improvement model.

Strong working relationships with the CIF and Construction Safety Partnership Advisory Committee, to name a few, cements Designer Group’s position as an industry leader.

Shane Blaney, Operations Director, comments: ‘Our Gold Standard training provides our non-negotiables for doing the basics brilliantly, enabling us to standardise operational delivery.

‘Improving how we deliver our projects has a direct link to the standard of safety on our sites - proven invaluable to delivering our client’s expectations.’

Designer Group is also leading the industry in becoming dramatically more sustainable, working towards low-carbon efficiencies and greener construction.

Setting the ambitious goal of reaching net carbon zero by 2035.

Continued international growth is anticipated to 2025 and beyond, with a strong order book of tier-one clients and the business is actively recruiting new apprentices and graduate engineers/ surveyors to support its big growth plans.

‘Designer Group will continue to invest heavily in its people, upskilling our employees and committing to resourcing technological advancements and sustainable developments,’ said Michael Stone, Group CEO.

‘By doing this, we will have better project cooperation,

compliance, teamwork and workplace efficiencies.’

He added: ‘We are all delighted by NISO’s remarkable award, and exceptionally proud of our people and this significant achievement.’

ABOVE: Derek Murphy

‘Our people are paramount. Our number one priority is their health, safety and wellbeing. The reinforcement of this will forever be the most important topic, and a core Designer Group value, all day, every day.’ - Michael Stone, Group CEO.