Introduction
An agency of the Government of Canada with 30,000 employees across the country was facing several real property challenges including the reduction of PSPC administered office space; moving to an unassigned shared office environment; moving off a legacy maintenance management system; the need for comprehensive/complete and accurate portfolio information; and establishing a process to resolve and track service requests of multi-building property sites in the National Capital Region (NCR). The agency partnered with Horizant to develop and execute a phased approach to leveraging the Archibus platform across its enterprise to gain visibility, elevate workplace management, and improve the in-office experience for employees.
Before integrating Archibus, the agency leveraged spreadsheets and Excel data to track and report on real property data trends. Following the implementation of Archibus, a Corporate Accommodations team was created to oversee space and building utilization. With desk booking as the foundation, this centralized team now leverages powerful reports and data to drive decisions on future leases and workplace design. Desk booking began as a 500-employee pilot project and is expanding nationally using the booking system across the portfolio. This significant increase in bookings will capture available data on workplace utilization and support more accurate forecasting.
Working to modernize asset maintenance and facilities management operations, the decision was made to sunset the agency’s legacy National Maintenance Management System (NMMS). Building operations reporting in Archibus replaced NMMS, an end-of-life system, due to legacy functionalities and will save the department both time and expenses while streamlining the process. With the support of Archibus to track the trends of building operations — from inventory asset numbers of lease trends, purchases, and service requests over time — reliable data on the performance of buildings is collected. This move will empower agency leaders with a comprehensive look at trends across the Real Property Portfolio, driving compliance with mandates such as Fixed Asset Review and the reduction of the federal office portfolio by 50%. Using this data, decisions can be made regarding underperforming buildings & surplus expenses.
ARCHIBUS & Eptura
Archibus is an Integrated Workplace Management System (IWMS). The software leverages existing building and asset data to assist facility managers in maintaining their portfolios. With 35 years of proven success as the originator of IWMS technology, ARCHIBUS has unparalleled leadership in driving workplace performance alongside technology with the partnership between Horizant & Eptura. Leveraging industry-leading resources from Eptura and innovative practices, Archibus benefit from comprehensive updates and functionality improvements. ARCHIBUS is used in many leading organizations, such as the City of Barrie, the City of Hamilton, PWGSC, WorkSafeBC, and Vancouver Coastal Health, alongside more than 50 Government of Canada Departments.
Horizant
Horizant bridges the organizational gap of Facilities Management, Human Resources and Information Technology through implementing and supporting an IWMS. Horizant’s team of industry and subject matter experts guide clients through interactive collaborations, mentoring, business process reviews, and best practice adoption techniques. Leveraging industry-leading platforms like ARCHIBUS, Horizant also assists with technology planning, implementation, and long-term support to ensure return on technology and process investment.
A Modern Approach To Property Management
To date, the agency has uploaded approximately 50% of the targeted square footage of its buildings to Archibus as part of phase 1 of its enterprise-wide rollout, which has given agency leaders visibility previously not had into its space across function, category and ownership. Identifying the type of space, how the space is used and who is using the space is a priority for the project.
Agency leaders have also launched the Archibus booking tool for employees across various locations and with multiple configurations — including neighbourhoods, virtual neighbourhoods and no neighbourhoods. The tool has facilitated a user-friendly experience for employees, who are also benefiting from automation of the agency’s Service Request process using the Archibus Building Operations module. The organization currently has more than 2,500 reservation tool users in the NCR alone, with hundreds being added monthly, and users across the country are being onboarded over the course of 2025. The booking tool allows consolidation of various buildings and groups to reduce the office footprint required by the agency, which contributes to PSPC’s office reduction plan.
Critically, the agency is replacing a legacy system with Archibus for the maintenance management of a major site with multiple buildings. With the software replacement, seconded employees will no longer be needed, making the software and information more accessible to the agency employees. Additional savings will be realized as the software will streamline procedures, automate repetitive tasks and enhance communication and the flow of information. Allowing further analysis of gathered information, Archibus will be used to document trends, improve scheduled tasks and provide valuable information needed for Real Property portfolio management. This move will be a vital step towards centralized management of federal real property to prevent the deterioration of assets essential to the delivery of federal programs and services.
To date, the partnership between Horizant and the agency has resulted in greater visibility into data that is allowing government leaders to leverage insights to optimize real property, make real time decisions, and ensure a seamless in-office experience for agency employees as it moves towards enterprise-wide integration and the projected rollout of the reservation app across mobile devices in 2025-2026.
