Case Study: Livewest begin large scale pilot of Aico’s Ei1000G SmartLINK Gateway

10-01-2022

Livewest Housing Association has begun a pilot of Aico’s SmartLINK Gateway across parts of their housing stock in order to maintain compliance in relation to Fire and Carbon Monoxide (CO) protection and the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018.

The housing association own and manage over 38,000 homes in the South West of England, from Cornwall to Gloucestershire. Livewest is making a significant contribution to alleviating the region’s housing shortage through investing £1bn in the South West economy and plan to build 6,000 new homes within in the next five years.

Livewest is on a mission to improve its residents’ health and wellbeing, through providing healthy homes that meet the standards outlined in the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018. To begin their journey into the connected home, Livewest is implementing a large-scale rollout of Aico’s Ei1000G SmartLINK Gateway. The pilot aims to improve resident safety and wellbeing while maintaining the quality of their housing stock, creating safer, healthier homes for their residents.

The Gateway is a technologically advanced alarm management system designed for landlords by landlords. Through the Ei1000G’s cloud-based portal, Livewest will have access to real-time data from connected alarm systems within their housing stock. The Gateway will also report on all alarm events such as alarm head removals or end of life. This will allow accurate forecasting of alarm replacement and maintenance to keep Fire and CO alarms in full working order, maintain compliance and ultimately, keep tenants safe.

In the future, Livewest is planning to complement the SmartLINK Gateway with Environmental Sensors. These innovative sensors monitor temperature, CO2 and humidity throughout the home, providing an insight into factors such as mould risk and indoor air quality, as well as highlighting potential fuel poverty. This vital information will enable Livewest to monitor the quality of their housing stock and provide healthy homes for their residents.

John Praoline, Renewable Technology Manager for Livewest, says of the project, “We see the benefit of this technology with regards to the wellbeing of our tenants and our commitment to adhering to the Fitness for Human Habitation Act. Not only will this system aid us in our compliance towards Fire & CO, but we will also eventually be able to monitor damp and mould and moving forward from this, all areas of the connected home. We believe that once the Aico SmartLINK Gateway is installed in our properties the world will be our oyster when it comes to IoT in our housing stock. The training and support we have received from our local Aico Specification Manager, Steve Bulley, has been of the highest quality. Even down to the work we will be doing with tenants so we can onboard and engage with them around this technology.”

Steve Bulley, Regional Specification Manager (RSM) for the South West, has a long-standing relationship with Livewest Housing Association and has worked with the team on numerous projects. Steve comments “I have worked very closely with Livewest and John Praoline for several years, so I was very excited to begin this journey with them. As the biggest housing provider in the South West, it is so refreshing to see such a large organisation putting the safety and wellbeing of their tenants at the forefront of everything they do.”

Steve also delivered Aico’s Expert Installer training to the Installers involved in the ongoing project. April Collins, Livewest Electrical Supervisor, says “The system is so simple to install with the app being very user-friendly. We have received full Expert Installer Training with our local Aico RSM Steve Bulley, and he supported us onsite for the first couple of installations, thanks Steve!”

To learn more about the Gateway and register your interest for a trial, please visit: https://www.aico.co.uk/smartlink-gateway/