CentraLine by Honeywell 2015 review

CentraLine, Honeywell
Partners as a key element of CentraLine’s development — Jim Sword.

Jim Sword, CentraLine by Honeywell and Ex-Or UK sales leader, reflects on a strong year for CentraLine.

CentraLine has enjoyed another strong year in the commercial building sector. Despite the varying performance of the construction industry, we have continued to see encouraging growth in high-end residential apartments.

Honeywell, an early promoter of products at the heart of a ‘connected home’ has been gratified to see the Hawk AX utilised to provide integration and control of building services in individual residences accessed and monitored by personal smart devices.

The remarkable growth of smart devices using remote Internet access has revolutionised the ability of independent system installers to find innovative ways of using programming software to develop purpose-built systems for their clients rather than installing off-the-shelf manufacturers’ solutions.

Independent systems installers are increasingly utilising the potential of the Niagara platform to develop and market their own software products to use with Hawk AX integration controllers.

We will watch future developments with great interest.

The CentraLine network now has almost 160 partners installing building-management systems based on our Hawk AX portfolio.

The industry standard of our partners was demonstrated this year when two of the prestigious Building Control Industry Association (BCIA) Awards were won for energy management and engineer of the year.

A further BCIA award for training was won by CentraLine in recognition of the dedication and commitment of our two senior engineers, Jeff Howlett and Jim Cook, and their contribution to training hundreds of BMS engineers.

However, perhaps contrary to the impression we sometimes give, Hawk AX is not the only product in our portfolio!

During 2015 we released a steady stream of new products for our partners, including the following.

• The C Bus IP driver for enabling AX to integrate with legacy systems. This product will give our existing customer base the opportunity to migrate their current systems to our latest product offering and future platforms.

• A new range of ball valves to meet the changing demands of the market that we operate in.

• The Atom range of display screens was launched, enabling us to offer touchscreens that have the latest processor and operating system technologies.

• We provided a new range of pressure-independent control valves (PICVs). The UK valve market has seen significant changes in recent years, and more systems are moving to 2- port control valves and, in particular, PICV valves where we can control the pressure and flow requirements of a system.

• We have also released EnergyVision, a really exciting monitoring and targeting software fully compatible with Niagara AX enabling extensive integration with Hawk and Arena. There are no annual fees, no limit on the users, and the system is expandable from 12 meters on a single Hawk integration controller to ‘unlimited’ meters on an Arena Supervisor (See the article alongside).

Looking forward to 2016 we will be introducing the new EagleHawk AX controller specifically designed for HVAC applications.

We will continue to expand the CentraLine partner network whilst encouraging a closer relationship with Ex-Or lighting control systems.

There is a natural alignment of HVAC and lighting both from the point of view of energy management and occupancy comfort. This is particularly true of the CentraLine and Ex-Or systems, which have the same software Niagara AX platform.

The Ex-Or integration controllers are based on the same Niagara AX technology and offer connectivity to BMS via the BACnet protocol.

In 2016 we will be actively promoting and supporting the integration of lighting and BMS with many of our customers. 2016 promises to be a very busy year!

I would like to thank all our CentraLine partners and their customers for their loyalty and support in 2015

The CentraLine team and I wish you all a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

For more information on this story, click here: December 2015, 14
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