As a property maintenance provider with over 30 years of experience in the housing sector, Morgan Sindall Property Services offers planned and reactive maintenance to over 200,000 domestic properties.
For maintenance providers, continuous monitoring of properties under management is critical, to gain real-time insights into aspects such as the property’s health, energy usage, thermal efficiency, air quality, carbon footprint as well the presence of damp and mould. This continuous intelligence empowers maintenance providers to proactively identify issues and take timely action. IoT and cloud-based monitoring solutions serve as a potent tool to address this requirement.
Insight-driven data analytics
Morgan Sindall aimed to generate insight-driven data analytics through a smart ecosystem of sensors, in order to deliver innovation in building and operating safe, healthy and sustainable spaces. To fulfil this objective, they approached Happiest Minds, an IT consulting and services company that enables digital transformation for enterprises by delivering actionable insights, business efficiency and seamless customer experiences.
Working collaboratively with Morgan Sindall, Happiest Minds performed a gap analysis and envisioned the target state for the solution. On the basis of this, an IoT platform was designed and built by adding additional data sources and developing analytical models using LoRaWAN gateways, TTI, Azure IoT Hub, Azure SQL and Power BI. The platform incorporated real-time data, an integrated smart thermostat, predictive modeling, RCA & bug fixes, proactive monitoring, and Power BI reporting and visualization.
“The team of Happiest Minds supported us in developing an IoT and cloud-based platform to get real-time data on the health of properties and achieve net zero goals. The platform was built using LoRaWAN gateways, TTI, Azure IoT Hub, Azure SQL and Power BI to bring data from an integrated ecosystem of IoT sensors and other data sources to support evidence-based decision-making within the built environment”, shared Datta Manas, Data Insights Project Manager at Morgan Sindall Property Services.
Real-Time Insights into the Health of Properties Under Management
The platform developed by Morgan Sindall, in partnership with Happiest Minds, enabled their teams to detect the risk of damp and mould, and leverage data-driven insights to plan their remedial works, as well as to notify authorities local authorities to aid people living in fuel poverty. Moreover, the additional data sources help the Morgan Sindall team understand a property’s energy efficiency and develop an energy prediction PoC model, while the commercial dashboards provide data on health and wellness in commercial properties.
“Our alliance with Happiest Minds made it possible for Morgan Sindall to provide their clients with business value through IoT tools and Microsoft Azure by generating insights around the operating environment of commercial workspaces. This includes the behaviour of HVAC controls within an office, trends around temperature and air quality within meeting rooms, and occupancy metrics”, said Phil Copperwheat, Director of Information Systems at Morgan Sindall Property Services.
“The IoT and cloud-based platform created in partnership with Happiest Minds helps Morgan Sindall generate alerts on the properties’ health, energy use, thermal efficiency, air quality, carbon footprint, and damp & mould detection and then push them out to the Morgan Sindall Property Services teams so that they don’t need to go and trawl through data and charts to identify properties at risk”, Dave Pearce, Head of Information Systems at Morgan Sindall Property Services, highlighted. “This implies that issues can be distinguished before, and action can be taken instantly. As a result, tenants’ welfare is taken care of more effectively and thoroughly, and issues are caught early before they become more serious.”