Project Description

CLIENT

WAFI Group is a multi-diversified conglomerate that serves a broad cross-section of industries like Property, Hospitality, Industrial, and Transport divisions. The group has carved its strong presence not only in the UAE but across 16 countries worldwide. The company has a range of warehouses, villas, and offices, as well as the recognised Dune Apartments in the city’s hub and the exclusive WAFI Residence, which are examples of the few residential properties.

An iconic residential site located in the heart of the city, WAFI Residence is reputed to be one of Dubai’s most luxurious apartment buildings. The property has been renowned for its facilities and comfort offered to its residents since 1995. With offices on the ground and mezzanine floors, furnished apartments from levels 1 to 3, and unfurnished apartments from levels 4 to 10, WAFI Residence provides a multitude of options for its tenants.

Source: https://www.wafi.com/

BUSINESS CHALLENGE

WAFI Residence, the multi-tenanted residential site’s facility management team was reliant on sub-meter data collection that was carried out manually which was then segregated for allocating the utility bills i.e., energy, water, common area charges, etc. among their tenants.

A residential site with 160 properties housing 150+ tenants and the utility readings recorded and billed manually proved to be very challenging, highly time-consuming, error-prone, and inefficient for the team.

WAFI Property was looking to automate their utility billing process with an easy-to-use tenant billing software that will integrate with their building management system (BMS), centralize and streamline their utility billing & invoicing to their tenants smoothly.

SOLUTION

SIEMENS, a world leader in Smart Building Technologies chose eFACiLiTY® to collate and automate tenant billing operations at WAFI residence owing to SIERRA’s extensive experience in implementing tenant billing solutions for multi-tenanted facilities. They found eFACiLiTY® Tenant Billing System as a perfect fit for WAFI’s custom utilities billing requirements. eFACiLiTY® Tenant Billing System offered them a flexible solution that allowed them to accurately and efficiently account for energy users across the property on a unified platform.

eFACiLiTY® automated tenant-wise energy consumption calculations from the meter readings by seamlessly integrating with their BMS powered by SIEMENS Desigo™ Insight via BACNet protocol. eFACiLiTY® Tenant Billing System automated the tariff calculations, utility charges (electricity, water, BTU), and invoicing, thereby simplifying the billing process for the FM team.

Implementing eFACiLiTY® allowed them to have a centralized utility billing system that will let them manage utilities billing across any number of sites effortlessly. The ability to set up tenant/property wise charges, monthly rentals, maintenance fee, billing period, etc., has simplified the billing process multi-fold. The manual work involved in recording and billing the tenants is completely eliminated allowing them to save huge costs on manpower.

Today, all the 150+ tenants across their 160 properties have their bills/invoices automatically generated to their emails on-time as per their billing period with clear breakdowns of utility consumption, cost, rental charges, and greenhouse gas reporting. With carbon footprint calculation of each of these tenant’s in their invoices provides visibility into their sustainability efforts with the energy consumption data, motivating them to reduce their energy consumption, and benchmarking gives them a target to reduce the carbon footprint going forward.

KEY BENEFITS

eFACiLiTY® enabled them to manage and automate the complete process of calculating energy consumption and invoicing their tenants with crystal clear breakdowns with 100% accuracy was just what they needed to bring in the sophistication and the best tenant experience they were aiming to offer in their luxurious & iconic residential property of WAFI.

The other substantial benefits of implementing eFACiLiTY® Tenant Billing System include:

  • Automated accurate bills triggered based on actual consumption data directly from the meter
  • Transparency and visibility into the energy consumption data for tenants
  • Energy consumption/utilization benchmarking
  • Carbon footprint reporting for sustainability targets
  • Maintain historic repository or tenant-wise trail of bills electronically