Smarter Team
Steve Barham - Director - Sales
The inspiration behind Smarter Managed Buildings, Steve has been involved exclusively within the building controls industry for over 33 years, holding various sales and operational roles, working for Transmitton, Andover Controls, Schneider Electric and more recently, Comfort Controls.
With 33 years experience of all Schneider Electric systems including Infinity, Continuum and Satchwell, Steve is currently trained and accredited as an EcoStruxure engineer. With a further 7 years experience with Trend and Tridium systems, Steve offers a wealth of experience and understanding to be able to successfully design, quote, project manage and deliver complex BMS control systems for end users, consultants and contractors alike.
Steve graduated out of Loughborough University, studying Professional Management and from a technical perspective, has a unique industry educational background, holding HNC's in both Electronic Engineering from Burton Technical College and Building Services Engineeering from Nottingham Trent University.
Since 1998, Steve has taken on several roles either growing and developing existing regional businesses in the North West and East Midlands regions and more recently, new start up's, including Comfort Controls (Midlands) and Smarter Managed Buildings.
With Comfort Controls, Steve expanded the original Hemel Hempstead business by creating and developing a start up Midlands regional office in 2014. By 2017 and with successful growth in the region, a seperate company, Comfort Controls (Midlands) Limited was born and relocation to a brand new office facility in Ashby de la Zouch, Leicestershire.
Following the continued success and acquisition of Comfort Controls in 2020, it was time for a new challenge.
With his longterm entrepreneurial vision and passion to create a customer centric energy saving and wellbeing building management controls business, offering customers a team with unrivalled technical abilities, coupled with a culture of exemplary customer service, Steve has taken the opportunity to bring the dream to reality, with the inception of Smarter Managed Buildings.
Smarter Managed Buildings mission is to develop a pro active team, providing Innovative Solutions coupled with an Exemplary Service experience. To achieve this unique level of service, we recognise from a wealth of experience, that business flexibility is the key in our industry, to meet the ever changing needs and desires that our customers expect. All of our business systems at Smarter, have been specifically developed to complement this differentiation in the market, resulting in the empowerment of the Smarter team, to respond quickly, leading to an enhanced personal satisfaction in our roles, to strive towards delighting our customers.
We are very proud of our dedication to focus on core BMS services, without distractions of other areas of non BMS related building services or facilities management services. This assures that we can invest all of our focus and efforts to be early adopters and leaders in the implimentation of the very latest BMS technologies. This is coupled with our flexible and experienced project management and technical abilities, all of which help drive us to strive towards delighting our customers.
In the end, the team has been chosen for their passion and dedication in all areas of the implemetation and life cycle value of building management system technologies.
BMS@SMB - We know BMS back to front.
Outside of work, Steve has played the Euphonium in the same brass band from the age of 8, seeing the colliery band rise over the years from the lowest competing division, to the 'premier league' over this time as Principal Euphonium.
Steve also enjoys trying to keep physically and mentally fit, being a keen social runner and enjoying the mix of physical/mental satisfaction that yoga offers.
Steve is a Leicester City Football club season ticket holder with his son and daughter, who also play competitive football for Coalville Town and Loughborough Lightning respectively, who he enjoys supporting most weekends.
His other interests include all forms of motorsport and enjoys the odd exileration and challenge of a track day.
Liz Barham - Director - Finance
Liz heads up the financial leadership of Smarter Managed Buildings and has developed the customer centric financial systems, to allow the business to be fully aware of the exact financial performance, whilst more importantly, allowing the flexibility in the business, to allow us to complement and achieve our vision, for our customers to enjoy the resulting service.
With a long-term trust, integrity and experience in the financial administration of several charity organisations and more recently as the financial administrator of Comfort Controls (Midlands) Limited for 4 years, Liz offers the business a wealth of knowledge and understanding of the financial requirements to successfully lead the Smarter business.
Coupled with this, her knowledge of the specific construction industry financial procedures and contract legalities of our industry, including payment application procedures, domestic reverse VAT charging and CIS - Construction Industry Scheme, for payment of sub contractors, assures that the business is up to date with current contract obligations and HMRC legislation.
Liz has an in-depth working knowledge of financial systems including Sage, Microsoft Dynamics NAV and Xero. With this knowledge and in synergy with our vision and mission, Smarter Managed Buildings have chosen to partner with 'Xero', for our primary financial platform system. This was on account of the flexibility that 'Xero' offers, to allow us to accurately manage and monitor the financial performance of the business, whilst freeing our team to deliver and strive towards delighting our customers.
To complement 'Xero', we have invested in the 'Xero' integrated 'Construction Management' system, to allow us to administer the business through one point of financial data entry and allows us to manage both the standard fiscal needs of the business, whilst also allowing us to monitor the actual performance of each and every project and service contract, against our initial tender costs and labour estimations. We can feed the results of this monitoring back into our 'continuous improvement' strategies and team at Smarter Managed Buildings.
Smarter Managed Buildings have partnered with Coalville based accountants, Marlow Proactive, who offer us a local service coupled with a specific knowledge of the IT and construction sectors in our industry, to further complement, understand and support our business.
Outside of work, Liz is an advid supporter of Leicester City Football club and has enjoyed playing the Trombone in various brass bands, including appearing and performing on the childrens TV show 'Blue Peter' and at the Albert Hall in London.
Darren Willis - Director - Operations
Darren leads the operational delivery and development of our business systems to assure our flexibility to maximise efficiencies and meet our customer needs.
With 29 years in the controls industry, Darren has spent the majority of this period developing a vast amount of experience in the design and installation delivery of numerous Trend and North systems.
As a Trend 'Expert' trained engineer for many years, Darren has specific experience in integration of systems and graphical user interfaces.
With the release of the latest Trend IQ Vision Supervisor, Darren has been an early adopter of the system and has developed an understanding to develop unique graphical user interfaces, to help our customers get the most out of their systems and buildings, in terms of the performance and management data of the building operation.
In the last 7 years, Darren has completed the full Schneider Electric 'EcoStruxure' courses, becoming an' EcoXpert' trained engineer. Again he has developed some impressive graphical user interfaces for our customers.
After completing and passing the complete BCIA BMS training course programme, Darren has developed a wealth of building services knowledge to complement his project management skills.
Darren is a 'BCIA Engineer of the year' finalist.
When not at work, Darren has been a member of the Salvation Army for many years and holds the position of Baritone in the world renowned 'International Staff Band of the Salvation Army'. He is also bandmaster of the Derby Central Salvation Army band.
Darren also supports Derby County football club and is often found in a 'Blaze' fitness class of an evening.
Huw Bostock - Commissioning Engineer
Huw heads up our commissioning team, project engineering and delivering our BMS systems.
As Huw spends a lot of his time on site delivering our systems for our customers, he represents one of the most important roles at Smarter, as he is meeting and working with our customers directly on a daily basis.
Whilst Huw has only been in the industry for under 10 years, his level of technical ability and more importantly, his proactive attitude to help customers and his 'can do' attitude, far surpasses his young age. He is passionate about assuring the quality of the BMS systems we install and we are fortunate to be able to offer this customer experience at the 'coal face' with Huw and the team.
Huw manages a number of our electrical installation sub contractors, control panel manufacturers and also our full team of sub contract commissioning engineering resources who partner with Smarter.
Although Huw is relatively new to the industry, he has already honed many skills and knowledge with manufacturer systems including Cylon, Tridium, Trend and Schneider Electric.
Huw, is also an accomplished control panel installer and is experienced in being able to modify control panels, to a high level of knowledge and quality, on customers sites. At Smarter, we find this added skill as a huge benefit to the efficient delivery and repair to control panels, both for our own business efficiencies, but more importantly, to help resolve and fix systems and get the systems operational in a shorter period as possible, for the benefit of our customers.
Therefore, one of our business stratagies at Smarter is to provide our commissioning engineers with the latest suitable vehicles to allow us to provide this enhanced level of service, requiring the storage space to carry a reasonable amount of control panel and electrical installation tools, cables and installation equipment, to offer this enhanced service at Smarter.
We are very proud of Huw and he has already been selected as finalist in the catagory of 'Young engineer of the Year' at the BCIA - Building Controls Industry Association annual awards in 2020, in his earlier career.
Past Customer Testimonials that Huw Has Received
The St Lawrence Academy School
Garry Drinkall
Senior Manager Systems and Structures &
Data Protection Officer
' Having battled with our BMS system for a number of years and our previous service provider being unable to resolve the issues it was a breath of fresh air when Huw Bostock took over the site support. He instantly gave us confidence that he knew the system we had and he was confident that he could resolve all of the issues we had faced. Huw has now not only given us a system that we can feel confident in but he has given us a level of support that we had never had before with BMS. Nothing is ever too much trouble and he always has positive attitude. He has become well known within the IT and Premises teams here to the point where he is treated like one of the team. Huw’s knowledge and attitude has taken us from a “pointless” BMS system which was taking up 2 hours every day to manage to a system which we can now leave to work on its own.'
Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust
Birmingham City Hospital
Stephen Kingscott
Estates Operational Manager (Mechanical Services)
‘Since Huw Bostock became our primary support engineer at Birmingham City Hospital for the maintenance of the existing Schneider and Trend BMS systems, we have benefitted from many control issues being resolved and improving patient and staff conditions around the hospital. Huw always has a positive attitude and demonstrates a comprehensive depth of controls knowledge and always finds a solution to any control challenges we face. Huw has a ‘Can do’ attitude to his work and fits in well with the overall Estates engineering team’.
Huw is a 'BCIA - Young engineer of the year' finalist.
Outside of work, Huw enjoys a number of outdoor pursuits, including tournament paintball competitions and is a keen mountain bike rider. Huw also supports Leicester City Football Club and is fortunate to be able to mix business with pleasure, as Smarter Managed Buildings have a support contract at the King Power Stadium, a contract that Huw manages.