learn how Safecility helped EOM pivot to automation
Saved each testing period
Device installation time
Compliance with British Emergency Lighting Standard
Established in the 1990s EOM Limited and their 40+ staff carry out all aspects of electrical, plumbing, heating, and carpentry work throughout Mid Wales and the borders.
When EOM was approached by one of its largest customers about using sensors to automate their emergency lighting testing they were immediately interested.
EOM’s General Operations Manager Mike Mills explains “we look after all aspects of property maintenance, we’re a one-stop-shop for our customers. One of the services we offer is regular Emergency Lighting testing. Our electricians go out and manually test the lighting – that’s quite a challenge due to the geography of where we live and the mileage involved.”
Mike estimates an astounding 500 miles clocked up for each complete round of their emergency lighting testing.
“The lack of advanced insight with manual testing is also a struggle.” say’s Mike. “If a light fails a test and the electrician doesn’t have the part to hand it’s a return journey. It makes first-time fixes much harder to achieve and it’s a poor use of our staff’s time.”
In short, EOM’s highly skilled electricians were sinking massive amounts of their valuable time into emergency lighting testing, and, expending huge amounts of carbon while doing it.
An opportunity to approach emergency lighting testing differently presented itself through one of EOMs largest customers.
They had identified Safecility as the best retrofit solution to automate emergency lighting testing in their buildings. It could fit into any existing brand of light, was easy to install, and communicated using the LoRaWAN network.
“It was an inquiry from our major customer,” Mike says “but it was something we had been looking at and we were keen to do it.”
As it happened, the Welsh Government was rolling out nationwide LoRaWAN coverage. A government-backed network specifically designed to accommodate smart buildings and sensors.
As a solutions provider across the length and breadth of Mid-Wales, it made sense for EOM to utilise LoRaWAN to implement automation and cut down the journeys their electricians were obliged to make.
Mike and his team at EOM were fully onboard with their customers’ decision to switch from manual to automated emergency lighting testing.
Mike explains his thinking;
“It’s such a practical use-case for IoT that has many benefits.
“Safecility helped us elevate what we were doing”
– Mike Mills, General Operations Manager, EOM Limited.
“We ultimately tried out Safecility because of our customer’s request but we’ve since discovered so many advantages for our own business.”
Mike notes the significant benefits automation has brought “We don’t need to carry out testing anymore, it’s all done remotely. Test records are generated automatically and there’s a full historical audit trail if our customers ever need to prove compliance.”
“We also get real-time condition and health checks about the emergency lighting – that’s a great thing about the system, it identifies faults so we can fix it right the first time – that’s a big time saving for us.”
Emergency lighting compliance and repairs planning backed by real-time data is only the beginning for EOM.
Mike and his team are also using other Safecility sensors to demonstrate the potential of LoRaWAN technology to their customers.
“Safecility helped us elevate what we were doing,” says Mike “they gave us great technical support and guidance not just with emergency lighting but other IoT solutions too”
EOM’s goal is to offer cutting-edge sensor solutions to clients to save them time and improve their processes “We’re now offering Legionella monitoring, smart smoke alarms, and air quality sensing to our customers.”
Thanks to their years of first-hand experience, the staff at EOM understand where the bottlenecks are for their large customers. They’re currently trialing a LoRaWAN solar panel monitor to remotely capture how much energy is being returned to the grid from each unit. The monitor eliminates the need for access to the property, something that is often an issue for third-party contractors like EOM.
Mike and his team are looking forward to implementing even more automation and monitoring solutions for their clients.
“There’s bags of opportunity for LoRaWAN in buildings and property management, and even further afield in other industries like agriculture. I’m confident that this is only the beginning.”
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