Overview
Sheridan Point Condominium Association is a multi-family high-rise condominium building in the City of Chicago. They have 136 units, two full time Engineering staff, and multiple mechanical systems which are critical to their day-to-day function.
The engineering team admits that before Mango was implemented, they had no idea what was actually happening in their building, mechanically speaking. There were often complaints of low temperature overnight, or boiler failures occurring. When they decided to purchase new high efficiency boilers, it was critical that they were able to monitor them to ensure that they were functioning properly and providing the best possible value.
The Association looked at multiple SCADA systems and historians prior to settling on Mango. In the end, Mango was the obvious choice. Not only is it budget friendly for smaller operations such as theirs, but more importantly they were impressed by Mango’s incredibly dedicated team and their willingness to work with the customer.
They were also impressed by Mango’s open source background and continued active development. What truly sold them was how easy it was -- and continues to be -- to speak with the company’s support and sales staff. When they were first considering the solution, the Mango team spoke with such enthusiasm about meeting Sheridan Point’s needs and wanting to know how they could best help them use Mango – the customer was instantly assured that Mango was the way to go.
“Getting started with Mango was tremendously simple – the Mango team helped substantially with the initial setup and with use of the forums and videos, Mango has continued to be a pleasure to use.
We can’t speak highly enough of the Mango team. Since first implementing Mango, we have had nothing but positive experiences with them. The team has been incredibly responsive to our needs and has consistently gone above and beyond.
At one point, there was a data source (Ultrasonic Flow Meter) which we couldn’t read with Mango as the data type did not yet exist in the system. We posted a simple question on the forums, and in a few short weeks, with no prompting from us, the Mango team had developed the necessary framework to allow us to interface with this flow meter - at no cost. Needless to say, this is not the type of experience you get with nearly any SCADA / historian company. Mango has set itself apart as a company that truly cares about its customers and the product they worked so hard to develop.
The key to successfully using Mango is being active with the Mango community. Using the forums will not only allow you to assist others, but will allow you to learn tips and tricks you never knew existed. Additionally, take advantage of the videos – they are excellent and provide wonderful reference material."
The Results
The Association makes significant use of the Mango Graphic Dashboards. The high-quality graphics provide an easy way to take the pulse of the building. In addition, they use alarms to let them know when a critical event has occurred at the building. This is particularly useful because they know what has failed before it has a significant effect on Resident or guest comfort.
In the future it is the customer’s ultimate goal to use Mango to monitor and control nearly every mechanical system in the building. As the Mango database grows, the entire building gets smarter. For example, rather than having the air handler controlled simply by inlet and outlet temperature, they can take advantage of the hundreds of datapoints in Mango (such as floor by floor temperature readings) to provide much more accurate and appropriate control. The financial savings are obvious, but a less obvious, but more significant benefit is the increased comfort for Residents and guests.