Our Process
Wondering how we do what we do so successfully? To start, we don’t dive into a project headfirst. We’ll engage with your team and perform a needs analysis related to room and building technologies. We believe there’s no substitute for a good plan. To us, if you can’t build it on paper, why bother trying to make it work in a finished space?
ControlWorks has developed a well-defined process that will take your project from concept to completion.
System Design
If you already have a system design, you’re ahead of the curve. We’ll review the design and create our detailed proposal (also known as a scope of work). We’ll gladly offer suggestions, too. If we see something that may not work as intended or find something that can significantly increase the project cost, we’ll most certainly bring it to your attention.
No design yet? No problem!
ControlWorks can provide complete design services to ensure the final installation meets your organization’s needs. Using our decades of experience with manufacturers and individual products, we’ll select best-in-class services and programming for your unique objectives — and avoid problematic ones. We understand that a dollar today can save ten dollars tomorrow, and our solutions are designed based on long-term reliability to actively reduce your project’s total cost of ownership. Since we only sell our services, we’ll also help you to identify qualified integrators who can provide and install the hardware.
Merging the needs analysis and system design, we’ll create a detailed proposal, including a full scope of work and description of the programming and commissioning services we will provide. We’ll specify, in detail, the equipment that needs to be controlled and the functions our programming will cover, as well as our commissioning. We’ll ask you to review the proposal and when everything looks good, our work will actually begin.
We don’t believe in nickel-and-diming our customers, so you can rest assured that as long as the project doesn’t change, the price won’t change either — with no separate travel or overhead costs to be tacked on later.
Once the proposal is agreed upon, the next step is to design user interfaces — touchscreens, keypads, or simple buttons based upon the functionality described in the proposal. If you have an existing standard or template in use, we’ll work within it to help ensure consistency. If you don’t have — or don’t like — an existing standard, we’ll design the user interface based on best practices honed through our decades of experience.
In either case, before programming begins, we’ll provide a user interface submittal for your review with detailed descriptions of every screen that users will interact with.
They say that 90% of an iceberg is hidden, and this phase of a project is much the same. After the user interfaces have been designed and approved, our team goes to work in the comfort of their offices to write and test the majority of the programming using dedicated equipment. By accomplishing as much work as possible in our offices, we minimize both inconvenience and the loss of room usage.
Onsite Software Commissioning
Once ControlWorks has completed the programming development, and hardware installation has largely been completed, we’ll send one of our engineers out to commission the system anywhere in the world. This includes not only loading our programming, but also validating that other equipment has been properly installed, cabled, and configured to achieve the functionality agreed upon in the proposal. We’ll work collaboratively with the entire installation team to resolve any challenges encountered during the commissioning.
By providing onsite commissioning, the total commissioning time can be greatly reduced compared to other methods. Because our team can see problems firsthand, the time to resolve them is greatly reduced – and since our hands and feet are there, your staff is free to do what they do best instead of participating in an expensive game of telephone.
Since we’re the last people out the door during an installation, you know you’re getting what you signed up for.
Make ControlWorks Your Partner
To learn more about how we work or to schedule a consultation, fill out the form or call us at 440.449.1100 to discuss a project or a custom-built solution. We look forward to working with you.