Smart Building Technology Solutions

Energy Meters

There are 4.2 million smart utility meters in homes and businesses across the UK. By monitoring heating, electricity and water usage in real time, tenants and property managers no longer need to rely on estimated bills or regular meter checks. In turn, tenants can be assured that they only pay for exactly what they use.

Heating

Smart thermostats continually monitor energy usage and minimize power consumption, saving between £70 and £150 per household per year, according to the Energy Saving Trust. They can be remotely controlled to switch on the heating when a property is unoccupied, reducing the risk of pipes freezing and bursting. They can also provide a social benefit, by highlighting households that may be struggling with, for example, fuel poverty.

Connected thermostats also support more effective maintenance by continuously monitoring for faults and sending data directly to manufacturers. When a potential problem is identified, the manufacturer can either intervene remotely or send an engineer to solve the issue.

Fuel Poverty

Approximately 30% of housing stock is considered to be at high risk of damp, mold and condensation. On average, a cost of a disrepair claim for mold is £10,000. For a housing provider or landlord with 10,000 properties, this totals £30 million of potential exposure to disrepair claims for this problem alone.

For tenants, mold, damp and condensation issues can have significant impact on health. It can lead to allergic reactions and even asthma attacks. Technology-led solutions can prevent the growth of mold within residential property. By monitoring the temperature and humidity within a property, preventative action can be taken.

Legionella Remote Monitoring

With significantly more data available than with a manual temperature recording regime, monthly site visits reduced to a single annual visit, improved accuracy & reliability, a minimisation of disruption to an organisation, reduced administration time and cost and a massive improvement in sustainability to name just a few benefits.It is no wonder that remote water temperature monitoring to reduce the risk of Legionella outbreaks across sites is becoming the go to standard.

With a centralised customer data portal that is browser based and accessible from anywhere in the world. These systems are perfect for all types of businesses from small family run firms to multi-site nationwide organisations. All your assets can be viewed in one place and managed by one person. Action alerts and react in real time to issues as the occur, reducing the downtime of key services and improving the building environment in the process.

Lighting

The advent of LED technology has made lighting significantly more efficient in recent years, but leaving the lights on is a common way that families waste money and energy. Smart lighting can reduce household energy consumption by up to 90%. Remotely managing communal area lighting can also improve living conditions and security. Smart bulbs can learn when occupants are usually in or out, which may help deter potential thieves.

Protect Assets

IoT monitoring is not just suitable for use in the home. Assets within communal areas such as lifts and large boilers can be monitored to ensure they operate within their standard threshold. Whenever an abnormality occurs, you and your team will be sent a real-time alert via email, text or call – helping to prevent downtime or even failure.

Similarly, in instances where properties may be unoccupied, IoT led motion sensors can alert you to any unexpected movement within your properties or opening of door. With this system in place, those responsible for site security have a comprehensive view of your site remotely.

Water Leak Damage

Damp and water leakage issues are often an unexpected cost. Even minor leaks can quickly escalate with devastating consequences. With smart sensors, the problem can be highlighted as soon as moisture is identified and addressed before it is too late.

Smart sensors monitor and send real-time data about the property’s humidity and moisture levels. Combined with data from heat sensors, property managers can see where an issue might occur before any major problems arise. This can also have a profound impact on reducing health risks among housing occupants.

Security

For Housing Associations and their tenants, the implementation of smart technology – including wireless access control – is a win-win. Not only can it provide residents with benefits such as reduced bills, speedy delivery of maintenance, or greater peace of mind and security, but it also allows housing professionals to manage their buildings in a more efficient, sustainable and cost-effective way.

Smart devices can do everything from automated arming and disarming of alarms, to capturing CCTV footage and streaming to an off-site location for centralized monitoring. Smart locks are a great solution to the age-old issue of lost keys. Only requiring a smart phone with a matching signal to unlock them, access controls can be managed in a centralized online system.

Reduce Customer Complaints

The biggest KPI (Key Performance Indicator) in customer satisfaction is the number of customer complaints. High volumes of customer complaints is not only crippling to the daily running of a service such as a housing association but the damage to reputation of poor customer service and high complaint volumes cannot be underestimated.
With this KPI being so important, extra cost, time, resources, and staff is often spent on dealing with customer complaints rather than that money being invested back into the schemes to make real world improvements in an attempt to reduce the number of complaints in a positive way.

Boost Staff Health and Happiness

A well balanced building environment that is clearly important to the service provider gives a solid platform for people to perform at their best. If your workplace looks after you from the building environment upwards, you are far more likely to be happy at work, not take time off, and actually go the extra mile for them as you know they do for you. Happy staff will work harder and do more for the customers, providing a much better customer experience.

Improve Building Environment Health

The more data available from as many different types of sensors relevant to the building will only make a positive difference to the building environment health. By monitoring and maintaining comfortable levels of ambient temperature and humidity, by ensuring IAQ is high, and the building has good ventilation, you are making a happier and healthier environment for all building occupants. Staff will be more efficient, and customers will be more tolerant simply because of the conditions of the direct environment the building provides.

Increase Customer Satisfaction

By improving any of the other areas of building environment management, it will only ever end in improved customer satisfaction. Customer and end users of services don’t want much. They simply want the service advertised to do what it says it will do. This is the same for any user of any service, the absolute basic requirement is that the service does what it says. Giving end users a better place to be, with more comfortable climates, happier staff and more staff resources available to the end users when they are required are guarantees that the service will be as good as it can be.

Increase Service Uptake

By creating a better environment and healthier building with the implementation of a smart building system, customers will see everyday the improvement in building management, making their lives happier and easier to manage. Less downtime to services, better allocation of resources, happier staff, and a general sense of a good place to live will increase the uptake of new services offered by the housing associations. This in turn increases the budgets available to improve the customer’s experience.

Free up on-site Resources

Simply by reducing site visits alone from 12 monthly to 1 annual, the on-site resources required to administrate the site visits, the coordination on site to meet contractors and chaperone where required is reduced by 91.6% This benefit is carried over into the percentage of money saved, simply by no longer carrying out these tasks each month.

Remove contractor site visits

Having 1 system that can acquire all data needed to assist in building management and optimization means all current contractor sites visits are removed as they are no longer required. 1 annual site visit for system maintenance. No more missed site visits, no more admin to rearrange contractors and no more missed readings for all on site systems being monitored.

Enables Preventive Maintenance & Planned Management

Having access to data 24/7 enables data analysis to show trends and map performance of key assets. This knowledge allows a preventive maintenance plan to be adopted. Instead of changing components at set timed intervals or when there is a full break down, using data you can see when the performance starts to drop off and therefore when new components are required. Over time this picture can be developed to show the expected life of components within the key assets on site.