Crown House Technologies Secures Major Building Controls Success with Flagship Venue
Crown House Technologies’ superb work on a new flagship venue saw the building energy management systems (BEMS) specialists earn a huge win in May 2025 – netting the Building Controls & BEMS Installer of the Year award at the Building Controls Industry Association (BCIA) Awards 2025.
The awards ceremony, held on 1st May at the Eastside Rooms in Birmingham, brought together professionals from across the BEMS sector to shine a spotlight on the incredible innovation and expertise throughout the industry. Nowhere was this more reflective than in the Building Controls & BEMS Installer of the Year category.
Joining many other top organisations from across the BEMS sector in the category, Crown House Technologies’ (CHt) entry focused on the company’s work on a stunning new venue.
The entry
As an organisation with energy efficiency and sustainability at its heart, CHt was immensely proud of its work on the project – sharing the client’s vision for world class facilities and exceptional energy management across the entire premises.
With the client wanting their new venue to create best-in-class hospitality features; an intelligent, internet-enabled, fully controllable BEMS was central to this.
CHt engaged with the client and its stakeholders early through face-to-face workshops and show-and-tell sessions. This included inputting into the venue’s energy management system (EMS).
It was during these meetings that the client highlighted its need for the EMS to track the individual energy costs of the various rental units to enable it to monetise the energy usage. CHt updated the design, breaking the data output into smaller categories that the client would be able to use to improve its return on investment.
With the client very conscious that no UK venues like this had been handed over on time in the past two decades, they challenged CHt to buck the trend.
Despite the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine impacting supply chains and material costs, CHt remained on schedule and handed over the venue not just on time but early. Additionally, the business worked alongside the client following handover to help familiarise the end users with the BEMS.
The Project MEP Lead at the venue was quick to praise the incredible collaboration and close working relationship between Crown House Technology’s expert team and the staff at the venue. He said: “The CHt BMS are to be applauded for their high integrity collaborative approach, with clear communications to the design and development of a multiple services and function BMS platform.
“The BMS system has adopted a range of open protocols and has the capability of collecting data to support planned and preventative maintenance, cost management, energy usage, and operational use of the venue.”
Why it won
CHt utilised a combination of robust planning, through early stakeholder engagement, and design for manufacture and assembly (DfMA) expertise to achieve an early handover – despite major world challenges impacting supply chains and costs.
The company also successfully achieved a 60% time saving during the installation of MEP modules through a ‘plug and play’ approach, manufacturing and commissioning off-site and then installing wholesale once on-site.
In fact, the company’s innovative approach to installation and the utilisation of the safer, factory-controlled manufacturing facility in Oldbury, meant opportunities to influence the design in a way that enables CHt to move work activity away from the site could be identified.
Consequently, when delivering the air handling units, these could be manufactured, checked and validated in factory conditions rather than waiting for them to arrive on site.
Going the extra mile for the client also saw CHt identifying a new BACnet IP solution for extract fans and working closely with Elta Fans to develop a solution that allowed the client to manage and monitor the fans using open protocols. Utilising this open protocol IoT approach, CHt delivered a consistent engineering solution across the whole premises.
The company also additionally incorporated Modbus gateways into local distribution boards. These were installed and commissioned offsite in controlled and safe factory conditions.
The Project MEP Lead continues: “The BMS project vision was initially set out by Crown House Technologies (CHt) in early 2023, which was developed over a series of system development collaborative workshops, capturing all the MEP elements to be controlled and monitored, and future provisions for operational management.
“The BMS system architecture was developed and overlaid onto the floor plans, together with Control Function GUI’s and metering strategy, for food and beverage concession billing and metering used to monitor excessive flow rates.”
BCIA President, Stacey Lucas, revealed the category was one of the toughest to judge, with many deserving nominees, but praised Crown House Technologies’ exceptional customer service and attention to detail. She said: “The judges found it very difficult to choose between all the nominees as there were some incredible entries. However, Crown House Technologies’ work on the new venue project was exemplary.
“With such unique demands and a comprehensive energy management solution required for this major new project, Crown House Technologies needed all of its extensive expertise. The close working relationship with the client, and the regular workshops enabled effective collaboration and a truly energy efficient new large-scale venue.”
Entries for the 2026 BCIA Awards are open now