Manual overrides are a useful feature of any Building Energy Management System. They allow facilities teams and engineers to temporarily take control of equipment when investigating faults, carrying out maintenance or responding to unusual building conditions. Problems can arise, however, when temporary overrides are forgotten.

An override can prevent part of the BEMS from following its normal control strategy. Equipment that would ordinarily switch off according to a schedule could remain operational, while heating, cooling or ventilation may continue running even when there is little or no demand.

Because the equipment itself may still appear to be working correctly, these issues can remain unnoticed for extended periods. The result can be unnecessary energy consumption, additional plant runtime and increased wear on equipment.

Overrides can also sometimes mask an underlying problem. If an area isn’t reaching the required temperature, manually forcing equipment to operate may provide a temporary solution, but it doesn’t identify why the original control strategy isn’t achieving the desired result.

Regularly reviewing overrides should therefore form part of good BEMS management. Trend data, alarms and system monitoring can help engineers identify unusual behaviour and investigate whether equipment is operating differently from the intended strategy.

Concord’s maintenance services, dedicated Helpdesk and remote monitoring capabilities allow our engineers to investigate system performance and help identify issues that might otherwise go unnoticed. By resolving the cause rather than relying on long-term overrides, we can help clients maintain efficient and reliable BEMS operation.

Manual overrides have an important role, but they should remain temporary. Effective monitoring helps ensure a quick fix doesn’t quietly become a long-term source of wasted energy.

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