HSB Monitors Machines with Power Apps and Power Automate

Previously, documentation was carried out with pen and paper. This meant that after completing an inspection, our staff had to find a computer to fill out a form. There was no automation at all. The inspection report then had to be manually saved for the correct customer and in the right folder, says Annika Osbjer, Business Development Manager for Property Management at HSB Gothenburg, and continues:

“With the apps, our staff can now manage the entire documentation process on-site via their mobile devices, for instance, in a laundry room. Once the inspection is completed, the report is generated and automatically placed in the correct folder. This is a major time saver while also improving the quality of the inspections.”

Inspection App Saves Time and Money

HSB is Sweden's largest housing cooperative with more than 650,000 members. HSB Gothenburg is one of the cooperative’s 25 regional associations, with over 76,000 members and managing approximately 36,000 apartments in 360 housing cooperatives and 1,600 rental units.

One of the association's services is the management of housing cooperative facilities such as laundry, heating, electrical, and ventilation systems. This includes regular inspections of substations and laundry room machines to identify faults and deficiencies.

A few years ago, HSB Gothenburg decided to digitize the entire inspection process to streamline and improve the execution, documentation, and follow-up of inspections. Precio Fishbone was commissioned to develop a mobile app for substation inspections. The implementation was successful, leading to the development of an additional mobile app for laundry room inspections in the spring of 2024.

“After using the first app for some time, we saw that we saved a lot of time and thus costs for each inspection. Additionally, it’s much easier to stay organized with a fully digitized and partially automated process, from inspection to document management. Developing a similar solution for laundry room inspections was therefore a natural next step,” Annika explains.

Better Reports for Customers

The apps are built using Microsoft Power Platform with Power Apps and Power Automate. They include a series of checklists that HSB staff go through step-by-step during an inspection. When the inspection is complete and the user clicks "Done," an inspection report is generated in both Word and PDF formats. Since the system is integrated with HSB’s SharePoint-based document management system, the documents are automatically saved in the correct customer's document folder.

“The implementation of the apps, combined with expanded training initiatives for this type of inspection, results in a more proactive technical management. Thanks to the simplicity and time savings, we have become much better at documenting and following up on inspections. This solution also means that customers receive better, more uniform, and clearer reports,” Annika notes.

Challenge to Minimize the Number of “Clicks”

One of the major challenges during development was minimizing the number of commands in the apps. Considering that inspections are performed in the field, often in cramped and busy environments, it’s important that the app is user-friendly and that inspections can be completed quickly.

“It was a significant task to minimize the number of ‘clicks,’ especially in the laundry room app. This is partly because a laundry room inspection encompasses many dimensions. A housing cooperative can have multiple laundry rooms, each containing a varying number of machines. For instance, our largest customer has 38 laundry rooms. This increases both the complexity of the inspection process and the volume of documentation, which is also a challenge as we want the report to be easy for customers to read. However, I think we, together with Precio Fishbone’s app developers, have solved it well,” Annika points out.