Imagine this scenario: Your Building Management System (BMS) has been installed and commissioned, and your team has undergone basic training on how to use them. The installation engineers and construction teams have gone home. It’s go-time. You feel confident, knowing that your systems’ software and hardware are covered by the manufacturer’s warranty. Everything’s great.
Until it isn’t. An unexpected problem with your system pops up, like controls sequencing needs or integration issues. Good thing it’s under warranty, right? Only then do you find out that the issue you’re dealing with isn’t covered, leaving you on the hook for a bill and last in the queue to get a technician out to your site.
Standard Warranties Don’t Cover Everything
It happens more often than you might think. Standard manufacturer warranties are often narrow by design. They’re crafted to cover material quality and initial workmanship issues under the manufacturers’ conrol, such as flaws in the circuit boards or wiring, poor assembly, or factory firmware/software bugs.
Standard warranties exclude what happens post-shipment, exposing manufacturer limits. And the warranty protection doesn’t extend to how the system performs or degrades over time. Common exlusions include:
- Damage caused by electrical surges or impropper installation.
- Environmental factors like dust, humidity, or temperature extremes that can impact performance over time.
- System-level issues such as integration failures with third-party equipment, inadequare site commission, or control sequencing that doesn’t match operational needs.
This limited warranty structure is meant to shield manufacturers from variables outside their factory control, often leaving owners exposed to ongoing reliability gaps. Which means standard warranties fall short on the things that cause the most disruptive and costly downtime, such as:
Programming, Configuration, and Integration Adjustments
As systems are brought online and begin operating in real-world conditions, programming, configuration, and integrations may require refinement. These adjustments are a normal part of system optimization and may not always be fully covered under standard warranty terms.
Maintenance and System Performance
Scheduled maintenance is critical to sustaining system performance even in the first year. Without regular calibrations, inspections, and component replacements, systems can degrade, impacting reliability and effectiveness. These types of maintenance-related performance issues and normal wear are typically not covered under standard warranty terms.
Environmental Conditions
Standard warranties assume you’re operating your building under ideal conditions. However, many types of buildings are subjected high occupancy, 24/7 HVAC loads, and heavy foot traffic, and rely on mission-critical systems such as elevators, fire suppression, and energy management that make ideal conditions non-existent.
Importance of Covering the Servce Gaps in Your Standard Warranty Period
During the BAS warranty period, buildings often experience changes in occupancy, scheduling, seasonal conditions, and equipment interactions that require adjustments beyond what a warranty covers.
BAS service during the warranty period provides ongoing optimization, troubleshooting, and performance monitoring to address issues such as comfort complaints, control sequence refinements, integration challenges, and energy efficiency improvements.
While warranties replace failed parts, BAS service helps ensure the system continues to deliver the comfort, reliability, and operational savings the owner expects.
Albireo Energy In-Warranty Services (IWS):
To help building owners shore up warranty shortfalls, Albireo Energy offers In-Warranty Services that extend beyond standard warranty coverage for hardware, software, and related labor, to ensure your systems run efficiently from time the they’re installed.
Built into the original project scope, Albireo Energy IWS fills coverage holes during the critical warranty period, going above and beyond standard coverage to include:
- Two scheduled site visits with an Albireo Energy Building Systems Expert during the warranty period to ensure the system operates they way it’s supposed to, doesn’t leave you exposed. and keeps your building running. These visits have specific task lists and outcomes that help ensure your system is in good order.
- Free trial of Critical Alarm Messenger (CALM), an IoT-enabled 24/7 notification and escalation service that prioritizes alarms and alerts your team when there’s an urgent issue.
Don’t Wait for Problems to Happen
If you’ve completed a BAS project with Albireo Energy and you’re in the warranty period, don’t wait for a problem to happen only to realize it’s not covered by the system warranty.
Our In-Warranty Services (IWS) is built directly into your project scope to fill the gaps during the critical warranty period to ensure your BMS and EPMS systems and building are running properly from day one. Reach out to Albireio Energy to learn more.
