The parking conundrum was especially pressing because back then, the site was not optimal for those wishing to use public transportation. This meant that the majority of employees relied on their cars to get to work, but there were not enough parking spaces for everyone. After the initial allocation of spots, Mr Lamberty and his colleagues began monitoring usage. They noticed something interesting: 15 percent of the spots remained empty on any given day. How, they wondered, could they make the best use of these available places?

Thus began the mission to develop an algorithm-guided app to allocate these free spots on a daily, short-term, and long-term basis. Priority would be determined offline using a point system based on factors such as seniority, position, the need to meet clients during the day, and so on. Also, rather ingeniously, employees who carpooled would be favoured for getting an available spot.

The app also provides a marketplace for open parking spots. Someone with a dedicated spot who will be away from the office for a day can lease out their spot for a set price. Spots can be leased for days or weeks at a time, useful for when people are on holiday or extended leave. Everything from scheduling to the exchange of funds is handled by the app.

‘The app offers real-time matchmaking between someone who wants a spot and someone who has one to lease’.

On the back end, the app is managed via a dashboard which gives Mr Lamberty or whoever monitors the app a wealth of data in real time, and he can also analyse data over a set range. This allows Schroeder to optimise the allocation of spots and even overbook, much as airlines do, knowing that on average a certain number of places will be left free.

The parking module is just one of many on what came to be known as the Schroeder App, which Mr Lamberty describes as ‘an enterprise app’. It also has a ‘last mile’ module for employees in need of a lift from the nearest bus stop, a carpooling module, a dining module, and a communication platform, among others.

The app has been so successful in alleviating Schroeder’s parking woes that the firm now offers it externally to other companies. Mr Lamberty emphasises that the app can be highly tailored for clients, and it always bears the name and hallmark of the client even if Schroeder has designed it.

‘Our unique selling point is that we are engineers, and we are highly flexible. Any function that you need or can dream up – a module for a company calendar of corporate events, for example – we can include it in the app’.

For Schroeder, security and data privacy are of utmost importance, which is why clients can request two-factor authentication, and data is stored on site with redundancy and extensive backups built in.

‘Our solutions are developed and maintained in-house. There is no cloud. The data is kept right here in Luxembourg, in our Kockelscheuer location. Everything is highly secure.’

Want to know more about how Schroeder’s app can help your company? Contact Sven Lamberty at [email protected]