Citadel House of Technologies recently launched Fortress Solutions, a well-defined and cost-effective digital project and asset management solution (AMS), which addresses the critical need for practitioners to manage projects and assets over the entire lifecycle and to achieve sustainable operational excellence.

Olu Soluade, Managing Director at Citadel, explains that currently, there are only a few software tools available in the market, geared towards AMS, and companies have to rely on reactive maintenance strategies. Fortress addresses this shortcoming by providing a proactive approach. “The deterioration of assets due to poor asset and project management results in revenue loss and ultimately reputational damage.”

What makes Fortress unique globally, explains Soluade is the seventh stage of the lifecycle management process – which is the operations management segment. “The final stage of the project management functionality is aimed at onboarding asset maintenance contracts. When an acquisition/implementation project transitions into a maintenance contract at the end of the warranty period, the project must be moved to stage seven and a maintenance contract linked to the stage.”

He adds that  when a maintenance contract is secured for a client with existing assets and a new project is created and linked to that contract, the project must automatically be moved to stage seven. “And this is a great offering to the built environment across the globe.”

In 2017, Fortress Solutions was presented to patent lawyers, and the patent was awarded in 2019. Following this, the concept was presented to software developers with a scope of work outlining the deliverables, how it looks like and success criteria for the product to commence software development and testing.

In 2021, user testing was done by software engineers from around the world, including the United Kingdom, Nigeria, and different provinces in South Africa. Additionally, a mobile APP has  been developed, explains Nyiko Chabalala, Building Services/Research and Development Engineer.

Longer asset lifespan

Funmilayo Soluade, Director at Citadel, stipulated that numerous technical studies reveal that regular maintenance of assets results in a substantially longer lifespan for the asset. Furthermore, if the maintenance is carried out at optimal intervals, it results in much more cost-effective maintenance, leading to  substantial savings for the  asset owner.

Fortress can be utilized by every organisation or institution that has assets and maintenance operations. These include educational and medical institutions, private and commercial enterprises as well as data centre operations.

By using Fortress, organisations can ensure effective inventory, maintenance management and operations as well as holistic lifecycle planning for both the present  and future generations of the organisation.

“With a bigger focus on asset maintenance and replacement planning, Fortress combines the planning and acquisition activities of the asset life cycle into a single module. These activities include, but are not limited to, vendor and service provider engagement, procurement planning, asset class definition management, and asset register management,” adds Funmilayo Soluade.

In detail, the Fortress Solution comprises the following components, explains Chabalala.

Planning & Acquisition

The asset life cycle begins with planning. This function is critical in ensuring that adequate provision is made for any organisation to have the requisite number of assets in operation for maximum productivity at all times.

Project Management

A 7- stage procedure is addressed covering:

• Inception
• Concept and Viability
• Design Development
• Documentation and Procurement
• Contract Administration and Inspection
• Close-Out
• Operations Management
• Asset Maintenance

The Asset Maintenance module provides the key functionalities required to process maintenance-related activities on the asset, such as defining maintenance schedules as well as creating, assigning, monitoring and completing maintenance jobs.

Financial Management

This Module is the repository of all financial transactions related to the asset. To support the client with the historical financial data required to make well informed CAPEX and OPEX planning decisions, the system caters for the tracking of all expenses incurred during the life cycle of the asset.

Reports

At the heart of Fortress is its main objective to support the decision-making process for asset replacement and asset cost management with real time and accurate data through the provision of timely reports and business intelligence. The system thus includes a dedicated reporting module, complete with a dashboard that monitors essential asset management KPIs that highlight the situation at a glance. It also provides a comprehensive list of out-of-the-box report templates, as well as the functionality for users to interact with the data in the system by filtering and slicing the reports.

The launch of Fortress in the South African market will be followed by the introduction to international markets, particularly in Mauritius, Canada, and the USA, concludes Funmilayo Soluade.