A lack of standards

The proliferation of technology in the luxury home means that the ‘smart home’ or integrated technology industry has grown extremely quickly.

Unlike other more established trades in the luxury home construction market like plumbing, electrical, security, air conditioning etc, integrated home technology has been extremely fast moving and as such, it has few recognised standards and even fewer barriers to entry.

Anyone can call themselves a home technology integrator, open a trade account with a home technology distributor and start installing integrated home technology systems, regardless of their experience, training or commitment to customer service.

This is a photo of the main equipment room from one of our Rescue Projects. This client paid his original ‘AV guy’ over £100,000 for this system.

Then he paid Homeplay another £30,000 to make it work. That was 10 years ago - we still look after this client today.

Underestimation of the complexity

This lack of standards is compounded by the fact that technology integration is by some margin the most complex and diverse trade involved in the construction of a modern luxury home.

Home technology integrators need a deep understanding of almost every facet of the home, covering a huge scope including electrical and lighting design and installation, networking and Wi-Fi, heating, ventilation and air-conditioning, intruder and fire alarms, CCTV,  home cinema and media rooms, audio and video distribution, room acoustics, motorised shading, general building and finishing techniques, gate automation, custom furniture and much, much more. No other trade touches as many parts of the home as the home technology integrator.

Add to this the normal stresses and strains of running a business and it’s clear to see why almost all home technology integration businesses fail in the first 3-5 years.

Failure to deliver the promises

As a result of these issues, barely a day passes when we don't receive an enquiry from a frustrated homeowner, exasperated with their current integrator and/or system. Typical complaints include:

• An unreliable, poorly designed and difficult-to-use system that introduces a huge amount of stress to the homeowner’s life

• Poor or non-existent customer service - often the integrator has ceased trading, has missed several in-home appointments, or is not returning calls at all

• Unfinished systems - poor documentation, missing or non-working components, poor labeling of cables, poorly programmed lighting keypads with no engravings, etc, etc, etc

• Never-ending bills for fixing a system that didn’t work properly from the outset

Documenting and re-engineering to our standards

What we refer to as 'rescue projects' often require a significant additional investment by the homeowner to get their systems to the point where they provide the value that was originally promised. We can't take ownership of (and therefore support) a project unless we can re-engineer it to our standards - otherwise the experience the technology gives will end up reflecting badly on us.

The size, scope and nature of a 'rescue project' can vary greatly and as such it's almost impossible to provide a guide cost for a particular system without embarking on a systematic process to decipher the state of the system. What we can say is that from experience, 'rescuing' a project typically costs between 20% and 80% of the original cost of the system.

We'll now outline how this process normally works, with some guide pricing based on a typical 5,000sqft luxury home.

The 'Walk Test'

Firstly we'll book to attend site to walk the entire property and test and document the end-user functionality of the system - so that we can be sure of the current system functionality before we start any work.

Based on our example 5,000sqft home, this would typically take a two days for two engineers and cost £3,000+VAT. We would very much like the homeowner to be there during this work so that we can understand what their key frustrations and pain points are - quite often home technology problems are intermittent in nature, so having the insight of the homeowner will help to make sure that all issues are addressed.

During this initial visit, we won't do anything that a typical user wouldn't do - we won't adjust any programming or touch any equipment or cabling, we will just use the system as intended and observe and document the quality of the system design, functionality, documentation and installation.

The Report

Back at our engineering centre in Sunbury, we'll write up a report of what we find, outlining the general state of the system, highlighting any issues we've seen, with an estimate of what we think they might cost to fix. We'll also suggest any upgrades that would provide value. Normally we'd include to test all of the cabling infrastructure and to re-build the equipment racks as that's almost always required, but we'll base it on what we find and only carry out what we deem necessary to deliver the desired overall experience. For a 5,000sqft home, this report will typically take a day and cost approximately £750+VAT

The Work

We'll then work with the homeowner to agree on what work needs to be carried out ahead of us on-boarding the system to our Aftercare Membership. As mentioned, this typically ends up being anywhere between 20%-80% of the price originally paid for the system.

Once the system is in a state that it can be supported, we can begin the on-boarding process with our support team. This is likely to take a day for two of our engineers. During this time we will get the system added to our monitoring service and get photos of all equipment and any notes that would be useful for the ongoing support of the system. We would also then handover all of the contact information that you need in order to get access to our support team moving forward. Onboarding will typically cost £1,500 +VAT

At this point the ongoing costs will be as outlined on our website here - www.homeplay.tv/aftercare