Electrical Engineering Solutions

Software as a service (SAAS) will increasingly be implemented as an essential tool for facilities managers to better manage their property portfolios, with a strong emphasis on utility consumption and costs, says Bradley Hemphill, managing director of Electrical Engineering Solutions (EES).

SAAS is application software remotely hosted and managed by a service provider that takes responsibility for ensuring the application is always up to date, integrating this where necessary with third-parties, such as telecommunications companies, electrical meters and municipal administrations.

“In isolation, each of these administrative tasks has mainly nuisance value for the facilities manager if they are managed in house. Each application must be individually upgraded and managed. New tariffs loaded and kept up to date and this is fiddly, time-consuming and not core to the business and therefore often is incorrect which causes more administration to rectify,” says Hemphill.

“What we are increasingly doing with construction projects in which we are involved is to design the facility with SAAS in mind and ensure the components are included in the intelligent infrastructure of the building or complex.

“This means that as components that need to be managed are installed – such as air conditioners, lighting systems, PABXs, elevator systems, access control systems – the communications infrastructure that enables remote management is already in place and so implementation is straightforward. There is no need for a retrofit. “

Having SAAS implemented from the start of occupation of the premises enables facilities managers to accurately manage consumption of services and implement energy saving measures.

“Without the base measurements of energy consumption, for example, there is no way to accurately measure whether consumption reduction strategies are being effective and saving operational costs,” Hemphill says.

EES has embarked on a pilot SAAS project at its head office in, Cape Town to better manage its communication and utility consumption costs.

“Our experience will enable us to better advise clients on the efficacy of such a system. We expect to gain insight into whether we are being accurately billed by telecommunications companies and the municipality.

“Another advantage will be to monitor whether the energy-savings from our intelligent lighting and other systems we have installed are actually reducing energy consumption and to what level.”