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With nine years of experience deploying Optigo solutions across two companies,
Pranjal De is building OT network health into the foundation of EllisDon’s P3
portfolio — using a single score to end multi-vendor blame cycles and give
non-technical stakeholders a language for infrastructure risk.
At a Glance
- The Client: EllisDon Facilities Services (EDFS), a division of one of Canada’s largest employee-owned construction and building services companies, managing long-term P3 contracts across healthcare, K12, correctional, and commercial markets.
- The Scale: 20M sqft of managed facilities, including multi-decade facility management agreements procured through government partners. OptigoVN is currently deployed across five sites, with a major portfolio rollout underway.
- The Complexity: Multi-vendor BAS environments managed under long-term service obligations with strict performance requirements — while supporting non-technical stakeholders who need clear answers.
he has relied on Optigo — first as an Engineering Manager at Modern Niagara
Building Controls, then as Director of Technical Services at EllisDon Facilities Services.EllisDon holds long-term P3 contracts where performance obligations — and financial
deductions for failure — follow the company for decades.In environments like that, finger-pointing is not just frustrating. It is expensive.
“If I don’t have clean data, if I don’t understand the quality of the data
in my networks, how do I trust anything else? Optigo is part of that
foundational layer — without it, I can’t confidently put anything on top.”
Pranjal De, Director, Technical Services,
EllisDon Facilities Services
The Challenge: Running a P3 Portfolio Without a Common Language
EllisDon Facilities Services doesn’t complete a project and move on.
Under the P3 model, EDFS enters long-term facility management agreements —
often lasting 30 years — and carries contractual responsibility for building performance.
When something goes wrong on a multi-vendor OT network, determining responsibility
can have real financial consequences.
The challenge is that the people accountable for those consequences are often
not BACnet experts. General managers, facility owners, and project representatives
need clear, understandable indicators rather than raw technical diagnostics.
De explains that stakeholders may not understand BACnet networking,
but they understand a score. That score becomes a shared reference point
for identifying and discussing issues.
The Investigation: Nine Years, Two Companies, the Same Problem
De first used Optigo’s tools while working at Modern Niagara in response to
a lighting integration failure. Years later, at EllisDon, he encountered
nearly the same issue again.
The incident began with flickering lights. A lighting contractor claimed that
BACnet traffic from EllisDon’s system was flooding the network.
Using OptigoVN, De analyzed the OT network segments and found that:
- One segment had no connection to the lighting system.
- Another segment showed excessive reads originating from the lighting system itself.
- EllisDon’s systems were not generating excessive write traffic.
The data disproved the original claim.
“Without that tool, I’d be splitting networks and scoping networks and
pointing fingers forever. It just shut down that conversation.”Pranjal De
The contractor later identified a driver issue within its own network segment,
resolving a dispute that could otherwise have lasted weeks.
The Solution: One Score, Three Stakeholder Groups
The broader value of OptigoVN is its ability to translate complex OT network
conditions into a single health score that non-technical stakeholders can
understand and act on.
Earlier in De’s career, a problematic multi-vendor site received a network
health score of 14% using Optigo Visual BACnet.
“That health score was the only number that EllisDon needed —
and the healthcare provider needed — to confirm their suspicions
that something was significantly wrong.”Pranjal De
Today, EllisDon leadership reviews four key metrics in quarterly reports:
- OptigoVN network health score
- Maintenance score
- Energy score
- Comfort score
This simplified reporting structure allows executives and facilities leaders
to engage with infrastructure performance without needing BACnet expertise.
The Foundation: A Prerequisite, Not an Add-On
De positions OptigoVN as part of the foundational layer of building operations,
alongside BAS inputs, metering, and cybersecurity.
According to De, analytics and AI tools are only trustworthy if the underlying
network data is clean and reliable.
“If I don’t have clean data, if I don’t understand the quality of the data
in my networks coming into all the analytics tools that I have,
how do I trust anything else?”Pranjal De
Fault detection and diagnostics systems depend on accurate BACnet traffic.
Misconfigured networks can create misleading alerts and unreliable analytics.
EllisDon is now deploying OptigoVN across five sites, with broader rollout
plans tied to analytics deployments across the portfolio.
“It’s an insurance policy. And it’s pretty inexpensive compared to everything
else sitting in the stack.”Pranjal De
The Results
- A lighting integration dispute was resolved in a single meeting using
objective network data. - A troubled site received a 14% network health score, enabling facility
ownership to authorize remediation efforts. - A four-metric quarterly reporting model is now used across EllisDon’s portfolio.
- OptigoVN is deployed across five EDFS sites, with a broader rollout underway.
