Offices · Salons · Clinics · Gyms · Retail

Building automation for small commercial premises, without a BMS contract.

Lighting control, HVAC scheduling, access control and energy monitoring for small commercial buildings across the East Midlands. The functionality of a building management system, without the maintenance contract.

Book a free site visit From £4,500 ex-VAT

Small commercial premises fall into an awkward gap. A full building management system is specified, priced and maintained for buildings an order of magnitude larger, and comes with an ongoing contract that rarely makes sense below a certain floor area. Below that, most buildings end up with time clocks, manual switches and an electric heater under somebody's desk.

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What's included

Occupancy and daylight-linked lighting control
Zoned HVAC scheduling by area and by day
Staff access control with per-person credentials
Out-of-hours access logging
Circuit-level energy monitoring and reporting
Automatic out-of-hours shutdown
Emergency lighting test scheduling where required
Local operation — no per-device licence, no platform fee

From £4,500

ex-VAT, supplied, installed & commissioned

Small open-plan office with linear lighting and ceiling services — Time clocks and manual switches are what most premises this size actually run on.

01 · What that costs

The result is predictable, and it is on your bill

Lights on in unoccupied areas all day. Heating and cooling fighting each other in the same open-plan space. A building conditioned from 6am on a Sunday because nobody has looked at the time clock since it was commissioned.

And no data at all about which of those is costing the most, so nothing ever gets fixed — there is nothing to point at.

Lighting running in empty areas
Heating and cooling working against each other
Schedules nobody has revisited since handover
No figures to argue with

Loxone presence sensor for occupancy-linked lighting — Occupancy detection does most of the work in a commercial building.

02 · What we install

Residential-grade kit, scaled to commercial premises

Offices, clinics, salons, gyms, small retail and light industrial units. Occupancy-based lighting, zoned HVAC on real schedules, access control per staff member.

Circuit-level energy monitoring makes the running costs visible rather than inferred, so the next decision is made on numbers instead of a hunch.

Occupancy and daylight-linked lighting
Zoned HVAC scheduling by area and by day
Access control with per-person credentials
Circuit-level monitoring and reporting

Loxone Miniserver, the local controller the building runs on

03 · Ownership

No licence, no platform fee, no vendor dependency

It runs locally on hardware you own outright. There is no per-device licensing, no recurring platform fee, and no dependency on a vendor's cloud still being commercially available in five years.

If you want us to maintain it we are glad to. But the building does not stop working if you would rather we didn't.

Hardware owned outright, not licensed
No recurring platform or per-device fee
Runs locally — no cloud dependency
Maintenance optional, not compulsory

Why it's worth doing properly

Commercial Building Automation, done once and done right.

No BMS maintenance contract

You own the hardware and the system runs locally. Support is available if you want it, not a condition of the building working.

Occupancy-linked lighting

Lighting follows actual occupancy and available daylight rather than a time clock nobody has revisited since commissioning.

HVAC on real schedules

Zoned by area and by day, so you stop conditioning an empty building on a Sunday morning.

Access per staff member

Individual credentials rather than a shared code, revocable the day someone leaves. Out-of-hours entry is logged.

Costs you can see

Circuit-level monitoring turns the energy bill into something itemised rather than a single number to argue about.

No licensing creep

No per-device fees and no recurring platform charge, so the running cost doesn't grow as the building does.

Certified installers, never sub-contracted

Same week

Site visit availability across the East Midlands

£0 / mo

No subscription, no cloud fees, ever

12 months

Parts and labour warranty on every install

Works best together

Related services

One Miniserver runs all of it. Most customers combine two or three of these rather than installing them as separate systems.

Energy & EV

Solar divert · EV charging · Monitoring · Tariff shifting

Smart lighting

Lighting design · Scenes · Dimming · Circadian control

Security & access

Access control · CCTV · Video doorbells · Alarms

FAQ

Commercial Building Automation — common questions

What size of building is this suitable for?

It suits premises roughly between 100 and 2,000 square metres — offices, clinics, salons, gyms, small retail and light industrial units. Below that a few smart circuits will do. Above it you're generally into genuine BMS territory with the plant complexity and compliance requirements that come with it, and we'd tell you so rather than stretch the platform past where it fits.

How is this different from a building management system?

Functionally it overlaps considerably for smaller buildings — scheduling, zoning, monitoring and access. The differences are commercial: no proprietary maintenance contract, no per-point licensing, and hardware you own outright. A traditional BMS makes complete sense on a large or plant-heavy building; on a 400m² office it's usually more contract than value.

Can it control our existing air conditioning?

In most cases. Common VRF and split systems from the major manufacturers expose control interfaces we can integrate, and simpler units can be controlled via their existing wired controllers. Very old systems, or units with no control interface at all, sometimes can't be integrated meaningfully — we establish this at survey before quoting, not after.

How much does commercial building automation cost?

A small office with occupancy lighting, zoned HVAC scheduling, access control on two doors and energy monitoring typically starts around £4,500 ex-VAT. Larger premises scale mainly with zone count and door count. As with our residential work the quote is fixed in writing after a site visit.

What's the payback period?

For most premises we see it in the two-to-four year range, driven mainly by lighting in unoccupied areas and HVAC running outside genuine occupancy. It's very sensitive to how the building is currently run — a building already on well-maintained time clocks saves less than one where the schedule hasn't been touched in years. The monitoring data from the first few months tells you where you actually stand.

Do you provide ongoing support?

Yes, as an option rather than a requirement. We offer an annual support arrangement covering remote assistance, changes to schedules and zoning, and priority attendance. The distinction that matters is that the building runs perfectly well without it — you're buying our time when you want it, not paying for permission to use your own system.

Can it handle emergency lighting testing?

It can schedule and log emergency lighting function tests where the fittings support addressable testing, which removes a recurring manual task and produces the records you need. It does not replace your statutory duties or a competent person's inspection — it makes the routine part of the compliance evidence automatic.

Where we work

Commercial across the East Midlands

Next step

Thinking about commercial?

Free site visit, fixed written quote within 5 working days. No obligation, and no pressure — if a full system isn't right for you we'll tell you.

Book a free site visit