Warwickshire Police HQ
Overview
Hills Energy Management Solutions completed a major BMS refurbishment project at Leek Wootton Police Headquarters to modernise site-wide controls, improve reliability and create a more joined-up approach to building management across the estate.
The site included several buildings with separate controls arrangements, ageing infrastructure and an increasingly outdated BMS platform. Our role was to help move the estate away from a fragmented, legacy setup and towards a more resilient, supportable and future-ready controls environment. The project combined targeted refurbishment, new control panels and a centralised graphical interface to improve day-to-day operation, maintenance and long-term flexibility across the site.
Client requirement
The client needed to improve the reliability, usability and resilience of the BMS across multiple buildings on the site.
Key objectives included:
- replacing obsolete and ageing controls infrastructure
- supporting new independent boiler systems for individual buildings
- improving operational reliability and resilience
- creating a unified graphical interface for site-wide management
- reducing fragmentation across the controls estate
- providing a more flexible and future-ready platform for maintenance and upgrades
The wider aim was to create a controls environment that was easier to manage, easier to support and better suited to the long-term needs of the estate.
The challenge
The existing BMS had developed over time into a fragmented and increasingly difficult-to-support arrangement.
Ageing controls, legacy panels, historic alterations and limited up-to-date documentation all added to the complexity of the site. Multiple buildings operated with different controls and network arrangements, creating challenges around visibility, integration and long-term maintainability. The client needed greater independence at building level, while also wanting a more joined-up way of managing the wider site.
A further challenge was to deliver these improvements in a practical and proportionate way, making sensible use of retained infrastructure where it still offered value and avoiding unnecessary replacement wherever possible.
What we delivered
We designed, installed and commissioned new control panels to manage the heating and hot water systems across the refurbished buildings, delivering a modern BMS platform with the flexibility to support both current operational needs and future development.
The project covered the Stables Block, Workshop Block and 60s Block. In addition, although the Comms Block was outside the main refurbishment scope, we integrated its existing controls into the new graphical interface so that the client could benefit from a more unified site-wide management platform rather than being left with separate systems to manage in isolation.
Where practical, we retained suitable elements of the existing infrastructure, particularly in areas where this supported a more proportionate and cost-effective refurbishment approach. This helped reduce waste, protect value in retained assets and focus investment where it would have the greatest operational benefit.
Plant and system functionality
The refurbished BMS now provides centralised visibility and improved control across multiple buildings on the site.
The new platform brings a range of building services and controls technologies into a single graphical environment, giving operators and support teams a clearer, more accessible view of how the estate is performing.
This has improved day-to-day management of heating and hot water systems, reduced the complexity of working across multiple buildings and created a stronger foundation for future maintenance, optimisation and development.
Secure remote access was also provided to support faster diagnostics, more efficient post-project review and improved technical support without unnecessary site attendance.
The outcome
The completed refurbishment delivered a significant improvement in reliability, visibility and operational flexibility across the site.
Each building now benefits from a more independent and resilient heating arrangement, giving the client greater control over individual facilities while reducing reliance on the previous shared legacy setup. At the same time, the new centralised graphical interface has made it far easier to manage the wider estate as a whole, improving usability for operators and reducing the day-to-day complexity of system management.
By moving away from an obsolete and fragmented controls environment, the client now has a more supportable and scalable platform for future maintenance and development. The more open and flexible approach also gives the estate better options for future upgrades, helping reduce dependence on legacy systems over the life of the installation.
Overall, the project delivered a more robust, better connected and future-ready BMS environment, while making sensible use of retained infrastructure where it remained practical and appropriate to do so.
