A Connected Plant Room

Our brief

We were requested by a facilities management company to help them remotely monitor boilers and Air Handling Units within their customers buildings. Our client manages over 300 buildings across the country.

Our client was struggling to meet their customer SLA’s due to the obstacles involved in acting reactively. Additionally, they were undertaking a fixed maintenance schedule based on time rather than based on hours run.

The customer enquired as to if we could help develop a solution to make their plant rooms smart. The requirements of the proposed solution would be the ability to remotely monitor multiple boilers, made up of various manufacturers and utilising different fuel types, as well as air Handling Units. The solution would need to provide real-time status of the equipment, the long-term performance, and to determine when servicing was required.

The customer requested that this information may be presented on a dashboard to be located within their operation centre as well as be available to their onsite engineers, using mobile platforms.

Our solution

Utilising our collective expertise and experience, we designed a bespoke modular solution that consisted of both devices and software to enable our customer to remotely monitor their plant rooms.

A key design consideration was to form a flexible solution which allowed for the necessity of monitoring a plant room composed of different types of plant equipment, regardless of the manufacturer.

Using our extensive range of sensors, we were able to monitor the status of the plant, as well as energy efficiency and other key performance indicators. This data was then automatically conveyed to our IoT platform, the cThings Cloud.

Once the data was in the cloud it could be analysed to detect faults and alert the maintenance team to potential issues such as boilers going into fault, pumps failing or faulty control systems. Additionally, using our machine learning algorithms, servicing could be scheduled based on usage which saved cost and minimised service interruptions.

This data was then visualised using our bespoke dashboards to provide real time overview of our client's portfolio. An additional benefit was that time-consuming monthly KPI and service reports could be generated automatically by the platform, freeing up time for personnel to concentrate on other duties.

The results

The IoT deployment across more than 300 sites has led to the customer successfully meeting all their customer KPI’s over the past 12 months and resulting in them obtaining new maintenance contracts. The analytics from the platform has allowed them to identify when and where maintenance is required and has enabled them to lower costs whilst reducing the number of emergency visits due to unforeseen equipment failures.

The ability of real-time monitoring has enabled them to increase the efficiency of their customers plant, allowing them to reduce the energy usage and therefore costs even in the face of rising utility prices.

"The connected plant room concept allows us to have a virtual engineer on site all year. We have been able to identify and diagnose issues before our customers are even aware of a problem. Using the data and the cThings Cloud, we can ensure that our engineers have the right equipment and parts to resolve any issues in a single visit, saving us time and money."

The benefits

Preventative maintenance

Remote monitoring of the plant has reduced the amount of emergency site visits by more than 20%.

Improved service quality

Due to the fault notifications, the customer can be made aware of issues and rectify them proactively. Historically an issue would be reported by the customer, whereas now the solution has been fitted, the problem is typically resolved before a customer becomes aware.

Low cost

The solution has had a return of investment under a year.

Improved reporting

Using the cThings Cloud, complex and time-consuming monthly reports have been eliminated. The customer can now automatically generate reports, providing up-to-date status and performance information at any point.