Remote management: sensible or intrusive?


Terri Hickman of Intergas Boilers discusses the pros and cons of remote management in the Covid-19 era.


W


orking from home, such an alien concept at the start of lockdown, is now a much-loved (or tolerated, depending on your point of view) way of life. But, accessing the company servers from your


spare room or kitchen is far from alien to the army of consultants and freelancers who’ve been working remotely in this way for years. The ‘must have’ is just a fast, stable and secure internet connection. How


productively you’re working however is important to know, and a hard one to gauge in many industries, but there is a lot of software out there that makes managing, rather than monitoring the whole process as efficient and as accountable as it can be. The remote management of boilers in social housing began in the Netherlands over a decade ago. The objective was to gain data on boiler


performance and usage, and to understand how and when problems might develop, so they could be averted, often by changing parameter settings remotely. The quality of this information helped manufacturers improve products and customer service. This system reached the UK in 2014 and, while this technology is unrivalled in the HVAC industry, the UK was way ahead in the sophistication of its remote management systems in every other regard. Take social landlord United Welsh, an organisation that manages 6,000


homes across 11 local authorities. It’s been running a smart home pilot scheme at a supported living property accommodating three young men with learning disabilities. A range of mainstream Smart Home devices (Intelligent Personal Assistants, lighting, music, kettle), as well as home safety devices and sensors, were installed. The aims were to enable the tenants to perform more tasks


www.housingmmonline.co.uk | HMM December/January 2021 | 53


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