.png)
Where did the concept of Shokly come from?
Fire Safety is a crucial part of any building. The systems and products are barely noticeable yet are responsible for the safety of those in any and all buildings. Regardless of size or capacity, all buildings must contain the necessary systems and safety measures to prevent and alert an emergency. However, Fire Safety (FS) is also one of the most painful for building managers with it being heavily regulated, high risk and poorly served by current contractors.
Assessing the current environment of FS, we are presented with a plethora of pain points for stakeholders; namely the engineers managing and maintaining the equipment and customers whose properties are equipped with these important safety systems. Any level of dysfunction is too high considering the inherent potential risk.
For engineers, frustration revolves around the large amount of time it takes to carry out proper maintenance on fire alarm systems (FAS) which are located throughout the whole building. This is extended by time spent writing up and generating reports on the service carried out, which are often manually written, and therefore subject to mistakes and inaccuracies.
In addition to this, typical FASs will work on the basis of a traffic light system to alert in the event of an issue. For example, green = operating normally, orange/red = an issue with the system. The traffic light system will make someone aware of the initial fault however it doesn't clearly specify what, where or even when the fault occurred.
As for customers, they are frustrated by a lack of transparency on the maintenance activity and ongoing performance of their systems. In the worst instances this creates a gap in compliance in an area where the highest penalties are criminal. In France, 70% of companies close down in the months following a fire (source: INRS), so a well maintained and reliable FAS can avoid the risk of having to rebuild a business post-incident.
And so, taken together the above provides a convincing case for the need to improve this area of building operations.
What does Shokly provide?
And so in 2018 Shokly was created, an innovative solution to combat the very pressing and current frustrations that the sector experiences daily, both by customers and engineers. Shokly solves these issues by incorporating technology from outside of the field to assist, automate and ease maintenance in Fire Safety.
Maintenance service
For FAS maintenance, Shokly combines their proprietary technology and the expertise of engineers to bring more reliable, reactive and transparent maintenance to its customers.
Each customer benefits from an engineer dedicated to their building, provided with the time and technology, a digital module that connects to the buildings fire alarm panel and a mobile app, to assist with routine maintenance.
Regulated FAS verification and maintenance consists of an engineer connecting the digital module to the fire control panel and using the accompanying mobile app to test detectors, manual call points and actuators. This process means that instead of engineers travelling back and forth between devices and the fire alarm panel to check that each respective device is functioning properly, the engineer is able to carry out this verification both instantaneously and remotely via his mobile app. This technology allows the engineer to save a substantial amount of time on complete maintenance, as the mobile app records all actions and automatically generates an intervention report, which is then transmitted directly to the customer.
Fire Alarm Management System (FAMS)
In addition to this, Shokly offers a 24-hour supervision solution for FAS, thanks to its proprietary connected module, which interfaces with the building’s fire alarm panel. The module gathers activity data in real time, which is sent to an online dashboard that can be consulted by customers at any time. This offer provides continuous monitoring of a building’s FAS, and presents an effective alternative for buildings without a 24 hour security and monitoring station, offering real time, remotely accessible information.
Furthermore, in the event of a default, the dedicated engineer receives a live notification and intervenes quickly.
The advantage for the customer is twofold: they recover their peace of mind with the assurance that the system is working as planned, and they also benefit from real reactivity by their engineer, who receives notifications when events occur. Finally, the customer can consult the status of this equipment at any time thanks to the online dashboard.
How Shokly innovates
In the current market, Shokly is the first of its kind; combining cutting edge technology to automate FS processes.
By using this technology, engineers are able to drastically reduce the amount of manual time spent servicing a FAS. Where typically, a job can take upwards of 7 hours from start to finish, Shokly’s technology can reduce this process by 2 hours, thanks to the app and module’s assistance in testing and report generation. That is a 30% productivity gain. Time is also saved when utilising the module as a full fire alarm management system, where if an issue occurs, an engineer is notified immediately. The engineer can then attend directly to the affected zone without having to refer to the panel to understand the issue.
Not all buildings have the luxury of a security station or constant surveillance, and for those that do, the information offered by a fire panel can be very limited and not always well understood. For example, Fire/No fire., fault/idle. Instead, Shokly’s FAMS provides customers with access to real time information, with the added option of creating notifications when specific events occur, so constant surveillance isn’t needed.
Why Shokly is a great addition to the WeMaintain brand & a game changer for our customers
As Shokly began to develop the service aspect of their offering, advancing the product from single use, it was at this stage that the benefits of the partnership with WeMaintain became clear. What works so well about this unison is the shared similarities in structure that both companies demonstrate, as both provide customers with a service offering augmented by cutting edge technology. This eases company merging and also understanding from both Shokly and WeMaintain's customer base about the other.
Joined by Shokly, WeMaintain is becoming a building operation provider that fully leverages people, tech and data. It provides customers with a single point of contact that can take care of their building maintenance needs and one dashboard to access all the data and insight we extract on their buildings.
Both Shokly and WeMaintain's proprietary technology operates in a similar way and provides customers with the same benefits. Customers will continue to receive and access real time, transparent data about their assets in the same universal format that they currently view their information. Again, both pieces of technology are "brand/model agnostic", in the sense that regardless of building or system, the IoT modules can be attached to or used on any fire panel.
For customers such as building or property managers with multiple properties, Shokly offers multi-asset surveillance, an easy way to access information about the performance or functioning of a building's F&S system all in one place, either through the app or accessible through a desktop.
Ultimately, this unison of Shokly and WeMaintain serves to provide our customers with the best possible experience and the beginning of a more, all rounded building management service in one place. This next step in WeMaintain's growth brings us closer to achieving our mission: to put the best of people and technology at the heart of the built environment.
How do Shokly's values align with WeMaintain's?
Shared vision At WeMaintain, we've always been open about our decisions in deciding who we partner with, whether that be with investors, suppliers or new companies. We believe that in order to succeed, it is essential that everyone shares our same values and company goals. Both Shokly's and WeMaintain's founding teams fit and align on the same vision, to help pave the way towards a future of smarter buildings where people and technology work cohesively to provide the best possible service. This shared sense of purpose of both companies only strengthens our operations and motivations to succeed.
Engineer focusedIn addition to this, both start-ups from the beginning of their creation have focused on and recognised the need to revalue the engineering profession; re-enforcing their worth and empowering them with the tools they've never had before, in order to maintain buildings in a way they've not been maintained before. The technological assistance also allows for a much more manageable work balance for engineers, faster and more accurate acknowledgment of any incurring issues, and more time to solve them.
Customer focusedA second, yet equally as important focal point shared by both WeMaintain and Shokly is the customer oriented approach to business operations. It is understood throughout either company that there is both a neglect in communication and a lack of transparency shown to customers in regards to their assets, in current industry performance. Providing real-time, easily accessible and transparent data, through the means of data gathering software and an app to easily present it, is a highly held value of both Shokly and WeMaintain.Anti-waste ideology Through regular monitoring and maintenance of an asset’s performance, we are able to preserve and elongate the lives of products and materials to limit the amount of replacements. This ideology also encompasses time spent efficiently resolving issues. With the IoT modules and the technology, engineers are able to focus on verification and make good use of their expertise, no longer spending valuable time on low value tasks.
Learn more about our Fire Safety solution
