Raiffeisen Wohnbau: digital warranty support to simplify day-to-day work
How PlanRadar is improving documentation and communication within real estate project management
Raiffeisen-Leasing GmbH was founded in 1970 and in 2022 generated around €1,075 bn of new business, with almost 19,000 new contracts. The universal leasing company employs around 300 staff in Austria and offers vehicle leasing, fleet management and equipment and real estate leasing. The firm also acts as a building contractor under the Raiffeisen WohnBau brand.
Raiffeisen WohnBau is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Raiffeisen-Leasing GmbH. The company has been a project developer and building contractor for over 25 years and has already developed, planned, built and sold more than 2,500 privately financed homes. Raiffeisen WohnBau currently has project volumes of over €300 million and sells around 200 homes per year.
Raiffeisen WohnBau uses PlanRadar for defect recording and for documenting build progress. Six employees at the company are currently using the digital platform.
Markus Ban is a real estate project manager at Raiffeisen Wohnbau. In his position, he works as both a project lead and a construction technician. The core team is also made up of a project developer and the homes sales team.
Key tasks within Ban’s role include real estate project management, monitoring of costs, deadlines and quality, and leading the project team and consultants.
PlanRadar has been successfully used by Raiffeisen WohnBau for a long time. The company was already using the digital platform in August 2018, before Markus Ban started at the company. Since then, the Raiffeisen WohnBau team have seamlessly undertaken around 30 projects with PlanRadar.
The challenge: easy and digital recording of warranty defects
The decision to use PlanRadar pre-dated some of the challenges that the firm encountered with warranty management. Before PlanRadar was used in this area, warranty defects were still recorded with Excel lists and email correspondence. At this time, the company was managing fewer projects than it does now, which is why they could keep working in this way.
But as the number of projects increased, this method was no longer fit for purpose and they agreed to use PlanRadar as a tool for recording and statistical analysis of defects.
This decision was made based on the scope of the services and the technical skills of the team. Markus Ban emphasized the great customer support from PlanRadar: “Whenever I had a question or a problem, the customer service team answered within minutes. This isn’t the case for other companies.”
The solution: PlanRadar for defect management and build progress documentation
On a day-to-day basis, the platform is used for warranty work and also for construction documentation on the site. The local construction supervision team records defects during the actual construction period via PlanRadar, creates photo documentation and sends weekly reports to the project manager.
As PlanRadar’s coordinator for the Vienna site, Markus Ban is responsible for introducing his colleagues to the software. Staff find the platform intuitive regardless of how they like to use it. Some like to keep their role as observers and let the general subcontractor take care of activities within the software, while others are eager to create tickets on the site themselves and to make a note of the defects during the handover of the homes.
In the past, workers created Excel lists, wrote reports in Word and communicated via email — but now defect management and stock and build progress documentation are completely managed through PlanRadar.
The results: 3 hours a week saved after handovers
For Raiffeisen WohnBau, the centralisation of defect recording in one place is the top benefit of using PlanRadar. The company saves time with the software and it is much easier to use than when they worked with Excel lists that needed to be filled with text and photos. Being able to access a central storage location to prevent work from being done with different versions of data and information is another advantage. The construction supervision team’s regular monitoring of build progress and use of saved tickets mean that Raiffeisen WohnBau employees don’t need to visit the site as often.
Using PlanRadar has enabled the company to save a great deal of time, specifically from the point of handover to the client. Warranty defects are recorded, via smartphone or tablet, when the building is handed over and they can be tracked in real time. These aspects make slow correspondence a thing of the past. In the first 3 months of the warranty management period, they save around 2-3 hours a week and around 1 hour a week during the actual work on site. What’s more, using PlanRadar also makes efficient coordination and management of several projects at different phases possible, creating room and freeing up resources for other tasks.
External communication also benefits from defects identified at the time of handover being located on plans, which prevents misunderstandings and follow-up questions. The combination of photos, precise locations and additional text simplifies communication and makes it more accurate, which also improves cooperation with other trades and helps keep tasks running smoothly.
