Customer Success Story: Quebec Building Management Solution

Shaun Owens — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 18:51:03 +0000

When Silence Is a Problem

There’s an insidious kind of trouble that doesn’t announce itself. No alarm. No overflow. No obvious sign that anything is wrong. Just a quiet failure, unnoticed, day after day… until the bill arrives.

That’s exactly what happened to one of our customers at a lakeside building. Two sewage pumps sat side by side in the basement, each handling a separate drainage system. Both sounded identical when running. And that was the problem.

The Problem Nobody Noticed

For months, one of the pumps had quietly stopped doing its job. Without any visible sign of failure, no flooding, odor, or anything obvious, the problem went undetected. By the time it came to light, the downstream consequences had been building for weeks.

The frustrating part? The fix itself wasn’t complicated. What was missing was simply awareness: a way to know, with confidence, that both pumps were doing what they were supposed to do, every single day.

A Simple Solution With a Long Reach

The customer’s solution was elegant: a Davicom AXON-8A/POE fitted with two AC current sensors, one on each pump circuit. No complex wiring. No dedicated monitoring room. Just a compact, intelligent device that watches for activity and always reports.

The configuration was straightforward:

Each pump’s electrical draw is continuously monitored
If the key pump doesn’t register activity at least once per day, an alert goes out immediately
A weekly activity log provides a running record

No more assumptions. No more surprises. Just quiet confidence that things are working as they should. And an immediate heads-up when they’re not.

The Bigger Picture

What makes this story resonate isn’t the specifics of the plumbing. It’s the scope.

Silent failures are everywhere: a fuel tank draining unnoticed, a refrigeration unit losing power overnight, water creeping past allowed levels, an open door, or a temperature that exceeds safe limits. In each of these cases, the damage isn’t caused by the failure itself. It’s caused by the lack of awareness.

This is true whether you’re managing a vacation property, a commercial building, or a facility where uptime and safety are non-negotiable. The stakes change. The principle doesn’t.

The Davicom AXON-8A accepts up to 8 analog inputs and connects to virtually any sensor — current, voltage, temperature, pressure, level, and contact closure. It sends alerts by email or SNMP, logs activity automatically, and can be configured to trigger responses based on conditions you define. With multiple voltage input options, including power over Ethernet, installation is clean and simple.

Peace of Mind Is a Monitoring Strategy

Our customer at the lakeside building now knows, every day, that both pumps are doing their job. If that ever changes, they’ll know that day, not when the problem becomes expensive.

That’s not a luxury. For anyone responsible for a building, a remote site, or a facility where things need to work reliably and quietly, it’s just good practice.

Explore the AXON series

Have a monitoring challenge of your own? We’d love to hear about it. And help you solve it.

Customer Success Story: Franklin County NY’s Journey to Improved Emergency Communications

Julia Ahern — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 18:40:36 +0000

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STORY

Franklin County NY needed to have better awareness of the situational emergency communications sites.

PROBLEM

• Long and frequent system downtime.
• Confused and wasted service calls.
• Complex, non- expandable, rigid systems on the market.

SOLUTION

Increase situational awareness in a cost- efficient, but easily customizable way by leveraging Davicom’s Davicom CORTEX360 units and accessories.

RESULT

• Reduced downtime.
• More efficient service calls.
• Improved emergency communications reliability
• Increased first- responder safety
• Comprehensive solution with no recurring system fees.

The Story

About 10 years ago, Franklin County NY upgraded from a Low Band Radio system to a High Band Radio system. Due to budgetary constraints, the upgrade process was done in small steps, slowly upgrading sites over an extended period of time as money became available through the use of grant funding. This process meant that several different types of equipment were in use at the same time and had to work together. The county never had a solution to remotely monitor this wide assortment of equipment at the sites, and these sites were plagued with failures that caused extended downtime.

The Problem

The problem was that there were frequent failures at the emergency services communication sites and support technicians had to go on service calls blind. This caused further delays since back and forth travel to the sites was required to diagnose the issues. Due to the unknown root cause of the failure, the wrong equipment vendors were frequently contacted and everybody ended up wasting valuable time before the issue was resolved. For example, an environmental issue could cause a radio to shut down due to overheating, but the required resource was the HVAC technician and not the radio technician.

Franklin decided that enough was enough and that they needed a monitoring system that would give them situational awareness of the equipment’s operational status as well as of the site’s indoor and outdoor environment. This was vital, given the mission critical usage of the communications sites and dire consequences of having a failure occur during an emergency. In addition to site failures and delayed repairs, time wasted by already overworked staff was having a demotivating effect on morale.

The Solution

Davicom’s Cortex products were suggested to Franklin County by their local Bearcom Radio Dealer because of the products’ flexibility, extensive list of sensors and ability to connect to a wide variety of site devices.

After an initial demonstration, the benefits of Davicom’s solution quickly became apparent and were seen to match perfectly with the county’s needs.

One of these needs was to have the ability to quickly and easily create a completely custom solution with a Graphical User Interface that was tailored to the immediate needs of the county, but also knowing that the system could grow over time as needs evolved. Davicom’s systems were easily expandable without requiring additional system engineering, programming or large system upgrades. Check! ✓

Another need was to have the ability to monitor environmental alarms, such as wind speed, indoor and outdoor temperature, lightning storm approach and lightning strikes sustained by the tower at each site. Davicom already had all these sensors available and time-tested with their Davicom Cortex units. Check! ✓

Site backhaul connectivity had to accommodate legacy sites which only had dial-up modem capability as well as modern sites with full IP network access. Check! ✓

All this information from the various sites had to be brought back and monitored live on a central computer at a central dispatch location via the different communications channels. Check! ✓

As a bonus, the ability to monitor the radios, control the generator, and power cycle equipment through a network PDU was a great addition to the initial needs.

The main priority was nevertheless to have a complete suite of options that was simple to use, yet customizable and readily expandable for future evolution of the system’s requirements. Check! ✓

How It Played Out

Prior to providing the actual equipment, Davicom helped the County define the monitoring setup requirement and fine-tune the planned GUI.

Once the equipment was delivered, Davicom provided support to program the site configurations and GUI/workspace displays as well as to present a complete training session on use and programming of the units.

In the end, Davicom was able to provide a complete solution that met the immediate needs of the county, but was modular in a way that made it affordable for the current requirements and still expandable for the future.

The Result

Since the units have been deployed, Franklin County has experienced reduced downtime of critical infrastructure. Now, pre-emptive alarms allow non-emergency responses to correct issues prior to outages occurring.

Situational awareness of site conditions is used to prepare for storms, special events, or planned outages.

System reliability has improved and service calls have been reduced or shortened. Downtime is less frequent and Franklin County are now able to be more proactive instead of just reactive and blind.

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