Facilities Management communication
Two Way Radios for Facilities Management & Building Operations
With a custom two-way communications solution from Digicom, you can keep better track of your resources, respond faster to unforeseen circumstances and improve the safety of your employees. From monitoring resources to storing data, managing and tracking inventory, fast and efficient communications will simplify your management tasks, ensuring your business runs at its most effective.
Building Operations
Building operations run on coverage you can prove.
Digicom Wireless designs and maintains radio and in-building coverage systems for the teams that keep Australian property running: commercial towers, shopping centres, hospitals and aged care, universities, stadiums, and the managing agents who hold the service contract.
The Core Problem
Dead zones sit exactly where the work happens
A building is not uniformly hard for radio. It has specific places that swallow signal, and they are the places technicians spend their day:
- Basement plant rooms behind concrete and switchgear
- Rooftops and lift motor rooms above the antenna
- Loading docks and back of house corridors
- Multi-level car parks
- Service risers, tunnels and link corridors
None of it gets fixed by buying better handsets. It gets fixed by an RF coverage assessment that establishes where the signal actually falls away, then by repeaters and a distributed antenna system engineered against that survey.
Why It Matters
Response times are contractual, so they have to be evidenced
Facilities management is measured on service levels. A tenant logs a fault, the clock starts, and at the end of the quarter somebody asks for proof that the response happened inside the agreed window.
A radio system with dispatch integration produces that proof as a by-product of doing the work. The job is issued to a technician, the technician accepts it on the handset, completion is recorded, and the timestamps sit in a log you can hand to the client. Coverage is what makes it reliable: a job cannot be accepted from a plant room where the radio does not work.
- Motorola Solutions Platinum Channel Partner
- ARCIA & ACMA accredited
- Based in Sydney, serving across Australia
Where Systems Fail
Where in-building radio systems usually fall over.
We are usually called to a building that already has radios. The handsets are fine. What is missing is a survey, a coverage layer for the hard parts, and a plan for the technician working alone.
Nobody surveyed the basement
Coverage gets assumed rather than measured, so the gaps are found by a technician standing in a plant room with no signal. A structured RF coverage assessment gives you a floor by floor picture, including car park levels and service corridors, and turns the argument about dead zones into a drawing.
One repeater was expected to do everything
A single repeater in a riser will not push signal through five basement levels and a detached car park. Where the radio layer needs help, a distributed antenna system carries coverage into the parts of the building that need it. Where tenants also complain about mobile phone service, a Cel-Fi QUATRA commercial system addresses the cellular side.
The lone technician has no way to raise an alarm
Plant rooms, roofs and risers are where staff work alone and where a mobile phone is least likely to help. Man-down detection, lone worker timers and an emergency button belong on the handsets of anyone entering those spaces, with the alert routed through emergency alarm management to a control room that is watching.
Book a Coverage AssessmentRecommended for Facilities
Radios sized for occupied buildings.
Buildings full of tenants and visitors call for handsets that are discreet, quiet to operate and light enough to carry all shift. These three cover the on-site fleet, the portfolio layer and the technician who needs full keypad control and location reporting. All are supplied by a Motorola Platinum partner.
Motorola SL2600
Slim enough to sit under a jacket and quiet enough for a tenant floor. The usual choice for concierge, cleaning and soft services teams who work in front of the public all day.
Motorola WAVE TLK 100
The portfolio handset. Runs over the carrier networks, so a regional manager covering eight buildings stays on one talk group without a repeater at every site.
Motorola MOTOTRBO R7
The maintenance and security handset. Full keypad and display for work order text, built-in GNSS for location, and audio processing that copes with a plant room running at full noise.
Motorola WAVE PTX
Portfolio-wide push-to-talk for multi-site facilities teams.
Conventional radio is the right answer inside a building. It stops being the right answer the moment the same team is responsible for twelve buildings across a city, because you would need a licensed system and a repeater in every one of them. Motorola WAVE PTX runs over the carrier networks instead, so a regional manager, a mobile trades crew and an after-hours response team share one talk group across the whole portfolio.
It sits alongside the on-site fleet rather than replacing it. Each building keeps its conventional system and its in-building coverage, and WAVE PTX bridges into those channels through radio over cellular, so an escalation from a site technician reaches the portfolio manager directly. Supplied and configured as a Motorola WAVE PTX Specialist.
- One talk group across every property in the portfolio
- Bridges into each site conventional radio fleet
- Mobile trades and after-hours crews on the same channel
- Users added and removed as contracts change hands
- Location reporting for staff moving between sites
- No repeater or apparatus licence for the cellular layer
Work Order Dispatch Flow
From logged request to a closed work order.
Radio dispatch software turns the fleet into a job ticketing system. The technician does not fill in a form at the end of the shift; the record is created by the same actions they were taking anyway.
Request Logged
A tenant fault, an alarm or a scheduled task arrives at the help desk and is raised as a ticket with a priority and a location.
Dispatched to the Nearest Technician
The console shows who is on shift and where they are, so the job goes to the closest available person rather than a broadcast call.
Accepted on the Radio
The technician acknowledges the job on the handset. Acceptance is timestamped, so the response clock has a defensible start and stop.
Completion and Audit Trail
Completion is confirmed from the handset and the ticket closes. The log becomes evidence of service levels at contract review.
The dispatch layer is Motorola TRBOnet on a MOTOTRBO fleet, or Hytera Smart Dispatch on a Hytera fleet. Both give you the console, the job queue and the log. Where the contract calls for the conversation itself to be retained rather than just the ticket, voice recording captures the channel as well. None of it produces a usable record if the radio cannot reach the plant room, which is why the coverage work comes first.
Common Questions
Facilities management radio questions from the field.
Coverage, dispatch and proof of work are what building managers ask us about. These are the answers, without the sales gloss.
Can two way radios work in an underground car park? Yes, but only with a coverage layer built for it.
Handset to handset on the same level, usually. Down two or three levels and back up to the control room, no. Concrete decks, ramps and the steel in the slab absorb signal, and the deeper the level the worse it gets.
The fix is a coverage layer designed for the space: a repeater with antennas distributed through the car park, or a leaky feeder or distributed antenna system where the geometry is awkward. We start with an RF coverage assessment so the design is based on measurements rather than assumptions.
How do we fix radio dead zones in a basement plant room? Survey first, then extend coverage into the space rather than around it.
Plant rooms are the hardest space in most buildings: below grade, behind concrete, and full of metal plant that reflects and absorbs signal. Adding power to the handset does not solve it, and neither does moving the base antenna.
What works is bringing the coverage into the room. That means an antenna served off the building system, fed by a professional grade repeater or a distributed antenna run. Where the same room also has no mobile phone service, in-building cellular can share the same cabling path.
Can we dispatch work orders over the radio system? Yes. The console issues jobs and the acceptance is timestamped.
Motorola TRBOnet and Hytera Smart Dispatch both add job ticketing to the radio fleet. The help desk raises the ticket, the console sends it to a specific technician, and the technician accepts and closes it from the handset.
The part that matters commercially is the log. Every issue, acceptance and completion is timestamped, which gives you evidence of response times when the service contract is reviewed instead of a reconstruction from memory.
What protection is available for technicians working alone? Man-down, lone worker timers and an emergency button, with location attached.
Man-down detection raises an alarm if the handset stays motionless or horizontal past a set threshold. A lone worker timer prompts the technician at intervals and escalates if there is no response. An emergency button sends a priority alert straight to the control room.
For staff moving through a large site, GPS tracking narrows down where to send help, and emergency alarm management makes sure the alert reaches somebody and keeps escalating if it is not acknowledged. All of it depends on the radio working in the space, which comes back to coverage.
How do we run one radio system across a property portfolio? Keep the on-site fleets and bridge them with a cellular layer.
Each building keeps the conventional system that suits it, because that is what handles basements and plant rooms. Portfolio-level users go on Motorola WAVE PTX, which runs over the carrier networks and needs no infrastructure per site.
The two layers are then bridged so an escalation from a site technician reaches the regional manager on the same talk group. That is a practical arrangement for managing agents who pick up and hand back buildings as contracts change.
Do body worn cameras work alongside a facilities radio fleet? Yes, and they are worth it in high-traffic properties.
In shopping centres, transport interchanges and other properties with heavy public traffic, incidents involving staff and members of the public are a regular part of the job. Body worn cameras document what happened rather than leaving it to competing accounts.
They sit alongside the radio fleet rather than replacing it. The radio raises the response, the camera records the incident, and the dispatch log ties both to a time and a location. Worth discussing your privacy and retention obligations before deployment.
How many radios does a building need? Count roles and shifts, not floors.
Floor area is a poor guide. What determines the number is how many people are on shift and how they are grouped: maintenance technicians, security posts, cleaning and soft services, car park and dock staff, plus spares on charge for the next shift.
Talk group design matters as much as the count, because a fleet where everyone hears everything gets ignored within a fortnight. We will size both against your roster during a free system evaluation, and give you a figure based on your building rather than an average.
Teams In The Building
Who we equip inside Australian buildings.
Five groups share the building and each one needs a different talk group, a different handset and a different set of features enabled.
Maintenance and Trades
Display handsets carrying work order text, GNSS location, and man-down enabled for plant rooms and roof access. Loud enough to be heard next to a chiller, and rated for a wet switch room.
Facilities and Building Managers
Access to every talk group plus the dispatch console, so a manager can see open jobs, reassign a technician and pull the response log for a monthly report without leaving the desk.
Security and Control Room
Patrol handsets with priority on the emergency channel, alarm receipt at the console, and body worn cameras where the property carries heavy public traffic. Guarding contracts are covered further on our security page.
Cleaning and Soft Services
Slim, quiet handsets for staff working in front of tenants and visitors. Usually a separate talk group so a spill call does not interrupt a maintenance job, with a supervisor bridging the two.
Car Park and Loading Dock
The two worst coverage areas in most buildings and the two with the most vehicle movement. These are the spaces that justify a dedicated coverage layer, whether that is repeater coverage or a distributed antenna run.
Buildings Coming Out of Construction
Where a property is being handed over, the coverage design should be settled before the ceilings close. See our construction page, and pre and post fit-out testing for proof that what was specified was delivered. Critical facilities such as data centres and airport terminals are handled on their own pages.
Start With the Survey
Know exactly where your building loses signal
We will walk the site, measure coverage floor by floor including basements and car parks, and give you a written picture of the gaps with costed options for closing them. Existing fleets can be repaired and expanded through our service centre rather than replaced.