Marathon House is a residential property with one hundred and five apartments, situated near Regents Park. The property is managed by HML Hawksworth on behalf of Marathon House Right to Manage (RTM) Company Limited.
Each apartment is served by a heating, ventilation and cooling system based on a heat recovery system and fan coil units connected to central chillers. To ensure that residents’ homes are kept at a comfortable temperature all year round, it is important to carry out preventive maintenance at regular intervals.
In addition to the fan coil units, Marathon House also has dry coolers that were replaced last year and several central chillers that were installed a number of years ago. The older chillers require regular and careful maintenance to manage the risk of them breaking down more frequently.
Nick Hughes is the Property Manager at Marathon House who is responsible for maintaining the shared facilities on behalf of residents. “There are, on average, three can coil units in each of the one hundred and five apartments in our building,” he reports. When asked how HML Hawksworth stays on top of regular maintenance for such a large residential building, Nick Hughes points to the services provided throughout the year by Bonus Eventus Maintenance. “Servicing the fan coil units is a constant cycle. Each unit requires a scheduled service that takes from two to three hours, and in some cases eight hours to complete,” explains Hughes.
A trusted partner:
Bonus Eventus Maintenance specialises in residential and commercial heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC), electrical, mechanical and plumbing repairs. Bonus Eventus engineers embarked on a planned preventive maintenance programme for Marathon House. This has involved engineers visiting residents’ homes to insulate incoming pipes to the fan coil units; removing any debris or dust from the heat exchanger; checking seals; regularly changing the filter and performing scheduled functionality tests, in addition to providing other regular scheduled maintenance on the building’s central cooling system.
Maintenance delivers massive savings:
Like many residential property management organisations, Marathon House RTM Company Ltd., is run on a not for profit basis. As a result, any expenditure on major equipment has to be carefully planned and budgeted for, to ensure that it can be covered from residents’ combined service charges.
By engaging Bonus Eventus to service the chiller compressors, rather than ripping and replacing them, Marathon House has made a 90 per cent saving.
The building’s HVAC system is served by two central chillers, each of which has two compressors. Bonus Eventus has serviced all four compressors at a cost of £1500 + VAT plus an additional £2,500 + VAT for new parts for each broken compressor.
The replacement cost would have been £250,000 + VAT per chiller.
By expertly servicing the chiller units, Bonus Eventus has delivered a saving of more than £500,000 + VAT.
Similarly, the regular servicing of the fan coil units has delivered major savings. Many of the eighteen year old fan coil units had internal parts that had stopped working. To replace all of the units would have cost Marathon House £1,000 per unit. Bonus Eventus has been able to reduce that cost by two thirds by servicing each of the units in the one hundred and five apartments and replacing worn out parts, at a cost of £330 + VAT per unit.
Going the extra mile to ensure great service
Bonus Evenus has a small team of office staff who ensure a rapid response to customers’ requests by managing a team of twenty three field service engineers. The engineers have many years of experience in providing HVAC general plumbing and drainage; construction; boiler installation and repair services to the hospitality industry, public sector and private residential sector.
This breadth of expertise has enabled the engineers to take a practical and innovative approach to problem solving on behalf of customers, which has not gone unnoticed: “I have found Bonus Eventus to be proactive, diverse and flexible in the service provided to Marathon House” reports Hughes.
Under the contract, Bonus Eventus HVAC engineers provide an ongoing schedule of planned preventive maintenance on the fan coil units and chiller compressors, which means that engineers are usually on site at Marathon House. This has delivered an additional bonus when unexpected electrical or mechanical repairs are required to the lift, door entry system, CCTV, fire alarms, or other shared facilities, while also improving the service provided to leaseholders. Residents value the swift response provided by the Bonus Eventus team and HML Hawksworth has avoided incurring emergency call out charges.
Many shared residential properties rely on aging HVAC equipment which must be maintained from the combined service charges of leaseholders. Any replacements must be funded within the budgetary constraints of these pooled funds and with the agreement of residents.
Bonus Eventus works with customers to enable vital repairs and maintenance to be funded incrementally: extending the life of shared facilities, rather than incurring large costs up front for replacing equipment.
“Bonus Eventus understands the high quality service that we want to deliver for our residents and uses its combined engineering expertise and professionalism to deliver the best outcome, without automatically going for the highest-priced option. This is extremely valuable when you are working to a set budget,” asserts Hughes.
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