Intellmaps is an example of a successful Czech technology start-up. In just seven years of existence, it has risen to the top of companies dealing with digital real estate passporting and digital twins. We talked to the company's CEO, Mr. Ladislav Čapek, not only about how they cooperate with Prague city districts.

How do you cooperate with Prague and its municipal districts within the real estate management?

We cooperate with several municipal districts such as Prague 6, 8, 9, 10, or Prague - Vinoř and we gradually digitize their properties under management for these municipal districts. For Vinoř, we have now completely digitised all the buildings. We started with the apartment buildings, where we needed to find out exactly the layout and the size of the apartments, and we went on to the municipal office, the health centre, and then we went on to all the non-residential premises that they rented out, up to two schools and a kindergarten. You could say that at this point in time they are the first Prague borough, and probably the first among municipalities and cities in the country, to have a complete digital twin of all the properties they manage.

You mentioned a digital twin. What are our readers supposed to imagine under this name in the context of modern building management?

The digital twin is simply the transfer of visible reality into virtual space. We say that the digital twin has several phases. Buildings today either have no blueprints or only a paper version. We scan and digitize the paper ones using modern technology. Then we go further and create a database with spatial indexing where the data can already change in real time. Next, it is possible to have the data in the so-called BIM (Building Information Modeling). In order to be able to change the data in real time, we integrate CO2, temperature, humidity sensors or even moving objects. To make it easy for the user to grasp, we have three interfaces: each digital twin is created in 3D, then in 2D, which is easy for the human brain, and last: the street view, where you can see perfectly what it looks like in the real world, including technology, which is the intersection of static and digital data.

Who is your partner, or maybe the main user, in terms of borough staff?

It's mostly property managers. That means the people who take care of the buildings, deal with leases, or it's the facility managers who have to keep an eye on inspections. It's also the people in the investment departments, you could say everybody who needs to deal with the documents for real estate projects.

A few days ago, your company was awarded the Visionary 2024 award for its technological, economic and social contribution to the construction industry. What specific projects did you win for?

It wasn't really for specific projects, but for long-term activity just within the digital twins. That our technology is not just for highly specialised professionals who would be the only ones who know how to operate technologies like CAD, but because our data is accessible to ordinary employees of authorities and companies without the need for specialised training. We can make this data available to the general public.

What is the state of legislation in your industry and what is and is not going to happen in the near future in this field?

The European Union and the Czech Republic are pushing for digital passporting of real estate and infrastructure. Since this year there is a new building law, according to which every building must have building documentation. If it is not, the owner can be fined up to CZK 400,000 and the authority will order a passportisation. Every building must therefore have a building passport by law.

The second law, the BIM concept, has been approved by the government and we expect it to pass through parliament in the coming months. It brings a new legal obligation, especially for the state administration, regions and probably also municipalities, so that all above-the-line contracts are done in BIM. At the end of every construction project, the investor must receive usable data in digital form.

How do you perceive the state of digitalization of real estate in Prague or perhaps rather in the whole Czech Republic compared to the situation in the world?

In the world, especially in Scandinavia, they are generally way ahead of us. If there is any documentation of real estate in the Czech Republic, it is a mixture of paper drawings, sometimes CAD documents, often in a form that even I, as a surveyor, am not familiar with, let alone an ordinary citizen. Digitization of real estate in the Czech Republic is a field with potential for decades to come.

What Prague projects do you have ahead of you for next year?

Unfortunately, I am not allowed to comment directly on specific projects, but we are going to continue with digitalization in other parts of the city. Not every district has the budgetary capacity like Vinoř, which digitised in a big way in one year, so the districts are doing it the "salami method" and digitising gradually according to priorities so that they have it sorted out for the future.

Thank you for the interview