JSE-listed Redefine Properties, created from the recent merger of Redefine Income Fund with ApexHi and Madison, has outsourced its property management to a specialist property management company, Broll.
Redefine, which has a sizeable property portfolio, with the asset management being handled in house, said the management of its portfolio entailed co-ordinating all activities relating to the management of a building, from leasing to renewals, rent collection, budgeting and maintenance.
The group was seeking to minimise operating costs and aimed to reduce wastage and accordingly keep close tabs on electricity and water consumption in its buildings.
In order to facilitate early leak detection, prevent waste and minimise costs, as well as ensure accurate and timely water meter readings, Redefine had contracted local wireless machine-to- machine communication solution provider Beyond Wireless, to monitor water consumption.
Beyond Wireless offers a managed turn-key solution that makes affordable, scalable, real time monitoring and control of remote and mobile assets possible, by installing a remote terminal unit on the water supply’s pulse meter in any given building.
Redefine said the first unit was installed almost two years ago and to date about 80 more units had been rolled out after it.
Redefine asset manager Grant Elliott said each unit offered an alert function. Should water consumption fall outside of predetermined norms, an SMS and or
e-mail would automatically notify the relevant person of the water wastage, which could be due to a leak, or simply a tap being left open.
Elliott said this enabled early leak detection, which prevented or reduced possible flood damage and minimised the increased water consumption costs caused by a leak .
“The reports we receive from Beyond Wireless show an analysis of how much water is used at each property across the board,” he said. This meant it was possible to compare the water consumption of different properties or to compare consumption at one property for different periods, Elliott said.
The system is web-based, meaning data can be accessed from any cellphone or computer with an internet connection, making it both affordable and easy to deploy.
The monthly savings were calculated using the flow rate reduction (in kilolitres per hour) after the leak had been detected and corrected, based on a cost of R17,50 a kilolitre. In a single building where early leak detection results in a flow rate reduction of six kilolitres an hour, the estimated monthly saving would be more than R75000.