We’ve always enjoyed the challenge of creating bespoke software for clients where they couldn’t find something suitable that already exists.
Just such a scenario presented itself from a long standing contact of ours that works at Prefect Controls as the marketing manager. Their business is: the design, installation and commissioning of smart heating equipment, including radiators, thermostats and smart controllers. They design and manufacture many of those products themselves. In their own words: “Our goal was to design and make clever, but simple energy controls that fulfilled the commercial needs of the building operator while providing fixed control access for the occupant.”
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Get in touchWe had already built a new WordPress website for them with all the bells and whistles to display their products in catalog fashion and ensure that they could update the content themselves. Soon after launch, they had an idea for a heat loss calculator tool that they would like to include on the website for their customers.
Part of the process when designing these heating systems is to understand and calculate the heat loss for a room based on various factors such as area, window area, number of doors, insulation etc. All of these variables enter into a formula and the end result is the amount of expected heat loss, which in turn determines the wattage of the radiator required to heat the room efficiently. With the idea of what they needed, they contacted us to see if we could help.
After a little research we realised this wasn’t something readily available in as a plugin for WordPress and we couldn’t find any relevant libraries or code. It also wasn’t something we could engineer by combining multiple plugins. So the solution we offered was to use our programming skills to build a bespoke WordPress plugin.
We worked with Prefect Controls to establish the required features and set a budget, with those agreed we began the work.
The custom WordPress plugin was named the Prefect Heat Loss Calculator and the scope of work was as follows:
Input form page
- The input form will contain an array of options that will be submitted to the server.
Results page
- The server will use the variables to calculate the best suited product and output the result.
- The user will be able to add more rooms to build a list of results.
- The results will be removable.
- The user will also be able to be view a report.
Report page
- The report page will display a list of results detailing the values that were submitted and the recommended product.
Notes
- The design will need to be inline with that of the website.
It took us a little over a week to produce the first prototype which was very well received, it was tested by a professional heating surveyor who had also helped by providing some of the calculation formulas and variables required. His comments were: “This is very good, it’s going to put me out of a job!” Let’s hope not, he taught us what a ‘U-value’ is!
We’ve since updated the custom WordPress plugin with a PDF export feature so that customers could keep their results. We also added a convenient feature to duplicate entries which saved customers from having to enter details again when submitting multiple rooms. It still features on their website today as part of the service they offer: Prefect Heat Loss Calculator.
