Building a highly-energy-efficient smart building sounds like a dream. But for many facility managers and engineers, that dream can quickly turn into a nightmare when they try to layer cutting-edge software onto a “leaky” legacy network.
Imagine buying a beautiful plot of land, seeing a concrete slab already there, and deciding to build your dream home on top of it. You wouldn’t just start framing walls without checking the foundation first. If that slab is cracked or eroding, your house is eventually going to tilt, sink, or crumble. And as ENFRA, a leader in the Energy-as-a-Service (EaaS) space, continues to prove to their customers: you can’t build a sustainable future on a shaky foundation.
Jump to our interview with Justin!
The 30-Year Promise
ENFRA isn’t your typical contractor. They don’t just install a few sensors and walk away. Specializing in an Energy-as-a-Service model, they enter into 20- to 30-year agreements with their clients. They are the long-term stewards of a building’s efficiency, often placing asset managers directly on-site to oversee everything from renewables and battery storage to advanced Fault Detection and Diagnostics (FDD).
When you’re on the hook for long-term energy management agreements, you can’t afford “ghosts in the machine.” It’s about reducing project delays in smart building integration.
The “Silent Killer” of Smart Buildings
The challenge ENFRA faced is one familiar to anyone in the industry: legacy hardware. Integrating modern, data-hungry software like FDD onto aging OT networks is like trying to run a high-speed fiber optic signal through a set of rusty copper wires.
Without a clear baseline of the network’s health, new integrations often trigger “broadcast storms” and overloaded legacy controllers. These issues led to project delays, finger-pointing between vendors, and—most importantly—strained relationships with clients.
Before finding a better way, diagnosing these systems was a manual, grueling process. As Justin Carter, Controls Technologist II at ENFRA, put it: “Before the product, we’re manually logging into front ends of systems, clicking around, writing down what we see… It would take us years.”
Enter OptigoVN: The Network Health Checkup
ENFRA needed a way to see through the “fog” of their BACnet networks. They turned to OptigoVN, a cloud-based platform designed to provide instant visibility into the “invisible” traffic moving through a building.
The game-changer? The Network Health Score.
Instead of flying blind, ENFRA now runs capture files through OptigoVN. In minutes, the platform runs dozens of diagnostic checks and spits out a comprehensive score. It’s the difference between a doctor guessing what’s wrong and an immediate MRI scan.
Real-World Results: From Failing to Flawless
The impact wasn’t just theoretical—it was immediate. At a large university utility plant, an ENFRA technologist used OptigoVN to analyze a struggling network that was barely hanging on.
The platform quickly identified the culprit: graphics were attempting to read data objects that no longer existed. This simple programming error was clogging the network like a digital traffic jam. By cleaning up these errors, they boosted the network’s health score from a failing 40 to a solid 82. System stability was restored, and the foundation was finally ready for the advanced energy analytics ENFRA needed to run.
Why Every Manager Needs a “Score”
For ENFRA, OptigoVN isn’t just a troubleshooting tool; it’s a tool for accountability.
- Pre-Deployment: They map the network before installing their software to ensure they aren’t inheriting a mess.
- Construction: Commissioning agents use it to find duplicate device IDs and routing issues in real-time.
- Long-Term Success: If a multi-vendor upgrade causes a lag, asset managers don’t need to be BACnet experts. They can simply look at the score. If it drops 10 points after a vendor finishes a project, they know exactly who to call.
Check out the chat with Justin in this interview from an upcoming podcast:
Stop Guessing. Start Seeing.
You wouldn’t build a house on a cracked slab, so why are you building your energy strategy on an unverified network? Whether you’re managing a university campus or a single commercial high-rise, your OT network is the backbone of your success.
Don’t let hidden network issues sabotage your energy goals. See what OptigoVN can do for you and sign up for a free trial today at https://www.optigo.net/signup/.
