IBKS
Catalyzing Indoor Spatial Analysis

Space management is an essential business practice, allowing companies to quickly and efficiently manage their real estate. ESRI’s ArcGIS Indoors technology facilitates this with its ability to aggregate building information from CAD, BIM and various other systems. It is a highly beneficial tool and enables organizations to perform spatial analysis and optimize space usage.

One of the challenges that most organizations face when implementing ArcGIS Indoors is that it requires facilities data, which is typically scattered across various systems, including drawings, building information models, spreadsheets, and databases. In addition, most organizations don’t have up-to-date drawings and data across their portfolio. IBKS helps such organization overcome this hurdle by catalyzing this technology with its Mobile LiDAR scanning approach to digitizing building interior and exterior space. IBKS has optimized its reality capture methods to quickly generate new and up-to-date information that is used to design fresh CAD and BIM data, which can then feed ArcGIS’ Indoors maps, information model, apps, and dashboards.

ArcGIS Indoors acts as a digital twin of an interior environment and allows IBKS’ clients to analyze their available space, understand space assignments, and quickly run queries on multiple spatial criteria. For example, when a hospital needed to reassess its space inventory after certain departments were made remote, the ArcGIS Indoors solution, which IBKS implemented, was crucial in helping the hospital reorganize and reallocate the empty space.

“Our indoor mobile Lidar scanning approach, can map the spatial arrangement of an interior area and develop it as a virtual reconstruction in a matter of hours,” says Mo Haidar, founder of IBKS.

The solution became the saving grace for many organizations during COVID-19, when businesses had to adopt a work-from-home or hybrid working model. They wanted to avoid sitting on empty real estate and incurring unnecessary costs. The ability to look up the total square footage of a business unit, or check how many spaces are assigned to a department is a handy feature, as it lets organizations manage large-scale infrastructure from the tip of their finger.

While onboarding clients, the first step for IBKS is gathering the available information about their facilities, using the LiDAR and image-based reality capture technology. It starts with geo-locating the data and converting it into indoor information model and maps, followed by deploying ArcGIS indoor apps and dashboards configured to meet the client’s needs. Typically, IT, real estate, facilities and capital projects stakeholders get involved in the implementation process, and the client is given weekly updates throughout the implementation. Once the system is ready for testing, clients are taken on a virtual walk-through of the simulated environment.

One of IBKS’ success stories involves a healthcare organization that was having difficulty managing its numerous facilities during the pandemic. Building information, floor plans, and drawings were scattered across multiple systems and technology, making it a challenge to quantify the available space and optimize it effectively. IBKS’ solutions allowed them to consolidate the information from all sources into an indoor information model. They could access their portfolio of buildings across the city, clearly view all their facilities, see the changes in use in each, and devise more efficient uses of space.

IBKS’ highly efficient team comprises database experts, software developers, architects, and engineers experienced in the industry, bridging the gap between technology and functional expertise.

Through the ingenious implementation of ESRI software with laser scanning and reality capture technology, IBKS provides a fast, efficient, and relatively simple way for organizations to manage their entire real estate landscape from a single lens. This positions IBKS as one of the leading providers of innovative Indoor GIS technology.