This work was done in collaboration with Safe Software partner Langan.
Organizations invest heavily in collecting information. They survey properties, scan buildings, develop floor plans, inventory equipment, and implement systems to manage their operations. Yet employees often still spend hours searching for information, reconciling spreadsheets, and updating the same records in multiple systems.
A revised floor plan should inform the applications used to manage a building. An inspection should contribute to an asset’s condition history. Making these connections dependable requires reliable records, clear rules for sharing updates, and ongoing maintenance as buildings and applications change.
Langan’s Digital Solutions team works on this problem with Safe Software’s FME platform. The approach starts with a simple idea: collect the dots, connect the dots, and keep them connected.
Collect the dots: start with reliable information
Every organization has dots: buildings, rooms, equipment, utilities, inspections, work orders, drawings, and financial records. Some are well documented, while others exist in disconnected spreadsheets, outdated plans, or the knowledge of individual employees.
Before connecting systems, it helps to understand what information exists, identify what is missing, and establish the quality needed to support a business decision. Langan’s work here spans field collection, reality capture, CAD and BIM as-built preparation, GIS development, and asset and space inventories. Discovery and workflow planning determine how that information should serve the people using it.
Consider an equipment inventory. A list of assets becomes more useful when each record has a consistent identifier, verified location, condition assessment, and association with the correct building or space. Those relationships make it possible to connect equipment to maintenance history, inspection results, and replacement planning.
Before connecting systems, make sure each asset can be reliably linked to its location and the records associated with it.
Connect the dots: link floor plans with workplace information
Once the foundation is established, the next step is to connect information to the work people do.
Langan’s IndoorFusion™ illustrates this approach in indoor space management. Built around FME technologies, it connects Esri ArcGIS Indoors with integrated workplace management systems (IWMS). Langan also describes connections with enterprise asset management systems, BIM, and other enterprise technologies.
IndoorFusion supports maintaining floor plans and space data once, with automatic updates across IWMS and GIS platforms. Staff can locate rooms, conference spaces, assets, and outdoor facilities through ArcGIS Indoors. Field staff can also access work orders, directions, and asset information on a mobile device.
These connections bring location and workplace information together, supporting activities such as navigation and work order management.
The implementation still needs to reflect how the organization works. Langan designs these connections around several decisions:
- Which system owns each record?
- What information should move between systems?
- When should updates occur?
- How should exceptions be handled?
FME supports integration and automation, including workflows that run on a schedule or respond to events. For an organization planning a similar connection, the practical question is when an update needs to become available to the people and systems relying on it.
The same approach applies beyond indoor space management, including CAD and BIM to GIS, asset and maintenance integration, field-to-office validation, and capital planning. Whatever the workflow, each connection should answer a practical question: what can someone now do faster and more reliably because of access to better information?
“Langan’s IndoorFusion is a good example of what happens when deep domain expertise meets a flexible integration foundation,” said Don Murray, CEO, Safe Software. “FME works with all data and any AI, and with MCP, FME Flow workflows can be exposed as tools for AI agents while FME can also call out to other MCP servers. That gives partners like Langan a practical way to keep connected data ready for whatever comes next, and the same approach carries over well to other industries and solutions.”
Keep the dots connected: plan for the next change
Facility information continues to change after an integration goes live. Source data is revised, applications evolve, and new facilities and assets enter the portfolio. Employees need to understand how to operate the solution and respond when something requires attention.
Langan’s work extends through solution design, configuration, testing, deployment, documentation, training, and ongoing support to help clients maintain their workflows.
Maintaining these connections also creates opportunities to reuse what has already been built. A validated asset dataset can serve maintenance teams, capital planners, and leadership reporting. A repeatable drawing-conversion workflow can support additional buildings.
Evaluating that work requires a baseline. Useful measures include staff hours spent preparing data, turnaround time for updates, correction rates, and the number of duplicate steps eliminated. A complete assessment also accounts for software, implementation, hosting, and support costs.
Keeping facility data useful over time
Collecting reliable facility data is the foundation. Keeping it connected to the systems people use helps that information remain useful as buildings, assets, and operational needs change. Langan’s approach brings these stages together, from preparing the initial records to supporting the workflows that keep them current.
To explore these ideas further, read about how data integration addresses common asset management challenges and ways to automate workflows with FME Flow.
For an application in indoor space management, explore how Langan’s IndoorFusion connects floor plans with workplace information.
