Case Studies

A key part to our support to the community has been our connection to religious organisations and their buildings. Understanding the sensitivity and care needed for these communities are at the forefront of how we help in the advice we give and the ability to keep what are regularly ageing systems well serviced and maintained, in what can be very historical buildings.

With nearly 70 Churches, Temples and other places of worship and with some dating back to the 13th century, we have been able to service their systems with great care to ensure their incredible features and importance to their congregations are preserved and can continue to enjoy the buildings for years to come.

By then providing advice on longevity, cost saving performance and possible future changes, we have helped their long term plans find the right path forward.

After tailoring a planned preventative maintenance agreement to the client’s needs, Lindsey Group recently installed a range of cutting-edge solutions at an exclusive private residence in the nation’s capital.

We introduced a high efficiency boiler to the property, along with an air-conditioning system that utilises the temperature storage within the ground. These heating and cooling systems can be accessed remotely via an integrated network of bespoke and off-the-shelf control systems, and the temperature of the environment can be set to a fraction of a degree thanks to the innovative technology we sourced for the project.

The client is also able to control all audiovisual, lighting and security systems at the property to minimise energy wastage.

Our planned maintenance service provides cover for all these systems, day and night, to ensure any downtime in any part of the client’s home is kept to an absolute minimum.

When you’re in a really difficult situation, you need to have people that step forward to support you.

That’s what you get when you’re a client of Lindsey Group.

Late January 2023 at 5:30pm, we received an emergency call from a long standing Client, University of Essex. They had a major and dangerous gas leak and needed our help quickly. As we are very accustomed to emergency call outs day or night for our Clients, we are able to move extremely quickly, especially with very concerning events such as this. Within 30 minutes we had arrived on site, isolated and made the gas system safe.

Our Client relies on us to not only deal with normal gas systems within the buildings, they also need us to cover their medium pressure systems. This leak had occurred on the main supply to the campus that caters for around 15,000 students and staff; the size of a small town which now had
no gas supply at all to any building.

With our specialist partner, the team were able to start the repairs the very next day and within a few hours the leak had been found and repairs made the same day.

Together, the teams worked extremely hard throughout the day and evening as they were bringing buildings online and ensured the heating and hot water systems were working again to over 100 buildings and areas.

Communication was key in this situation, so the Lindsey team provided regular updates throughout so our Client was aware of everything.

The University were extremely pleased and surprised that the situation had been resolved much quicker than they thought it would; they thought days to get back up and running, where as our team were thinking in hours.

Security is when you know you’ve got everything covered. This is what we provide when we support our Clients with more than just their boiler, air-conditioning unit or heat pump.

So many of our Clients want the security of knowing that their whole system is supported and has been maintained, to prevent future issues. We believe that this helps keep people warm in their houses, cool in their offices and the perfect environment in every type of building you can think of.

We go further than all the companies that just cover one piece of equipment.

We believe that supporting and maintaining the system as a whole provides so many positive benefits than just covering one item like a boiler or heat pump.

A heating or cooling system is much like a car – it’s made up of numerous interconnected parts, significant pieces of equipment that when working together provide the desired effect in getting you from A to B.

When you get your car serviced, you generally have the car, as a whole, as a system all checked out. You don’t get just get one bit serviced. Because it can be a catastrophic effect that stops your car from working, if one of those parts fail.

By maintaining and supporting your whole system in your building, we can make sure your system reliably gets from A to B.

To get this level of security, all it takes is a list of the items in your system. We can even do that for you next time we’re there.

We can then provide you with that level of quality service you don’t get by looking after just one piece, then peace of mind can be yours.

We were selected by the Innovation Centre Knowledge Gateway (Oxford Innovation Space) in Colchester to carry out a review of their energy and deliver an action plan of positive changes to their systems, to reduce their energy usage and carbon footprint.

Their unique position as a hub of innovation and cutting edge clients has meant that they have always strived to push the boundaries in what and how they provide their unique and unparalleled support to local exciting businesses and students from the University of Essex.

This has led them to take action on how they deliver their services within their building to ensure they reduce their impact on the environment and match their own clients’ spark and innovation.

Having had the knowledge of our skills and abilities already after previous issues we have supported them with, they entrusted us to deliver on this fundamentally important plan.

The first key decision was to review their entire systems and the costs they were incurring from the different parts of their system.

Even though the building was relatively new and already included a number of well known environmentally improved systems, we helped them understand how they were being used and how they were set up. Importantly, this included their fossil fuel based systems and how we could reduce their carbon use as well.

This allowed us to highlight changes that importantly would not impact their clients needs and expectations of the building.

The first part of any project like this is to help understand where the energy is being used. They were already monitoring their energy usage and with the aid of additional meters within their plant room, we helped them create a more granular approach which has provided much more detail of the different areas in their building using energy. This was used to help highlight the possible savings attributable to the many options open to them.

The next step was to fully understand the existing systems that were throughout their building and help inform their team, what they were, how they worked and what changes could be considered. Going through their folders of Operating and Maintenance manuals (including accurate system drawings) was key to this.
A key hurdle to overcome was helping them improve their access to the BMS system that controlled nearly all of their systems and having helped them achieve this, we could really start to make a difference.

There are three types of improvements that can be made in projects like this:
Firstly the free and quick wins, using our experience in the design, implementation and decades of living with client systems, we know what really works and what doesn’t. Using that as a basis, the second type are the fairly inexpensive changes and slight alterations to existing systems that can prove to deliver some more savings over a period of time. Lastly, the bigger changes, more fundamental improvements to the existing delivery and utilisation of the energy used that can make much bigger savings over a longer period of time. These need longer to plan and implement as they can be substantial in nature.

Using this knowledge, we supported Georgina and her team through the various options open to them in their controls, time schedules, heating and hot water systems, lighting arrangements, air conditioning systems and their solar photovoltaic array.

This ongoing support has been delivered utilising the latest in online collaboration software, which has made a big difference in how a project like this can be communicated on and delivered.

This project is already successfully having an effect in reducing significant percentages of their overall running costs and importantly these effects look to be a regular fixture so will help for years to come. It has covered their renewable technology they use, but it’s also mainly included how they can best utilise their fossil fuel systems, so they reduce their carbon footprint quickly and effectively.

The story of this doesn’t end as this is ongoing, with more suggestive actions Georgina and her team can make in the near future and longer term. We are continuing to support them for the years ahead and it’s garnering interest from numerous other building owners, as they can see that we can make a real difference in reducing costs and their carbon footprint, with their existing systems.

This successful project has already made a difference to the Centre and how it delivers its support and services to all its customers based within the building. If implementing the further suggestive actions, they could even make more of a difference.

It is good to note that you don’t need an in depth project like this to begin with. You can make easy and simple changes that can start you on the road of saving carbon, energy and ultimately money.