Many IoT projects begin with technology. What sensor should we use? Which controller should we install? How will we connect the equipment to the cloud? After spending many years working with IoT projects, I have learned that these should not be the first questions.
I prefer to begin with something much simpler: What operational problem are we trying to solve? A recent airport water pump monitoring project illustrates why this question matters.
The Problem Was Not the Pump
Water pump motors are the kind of assets most people rarely think about until something goes wrong. In facilities such as airports, factories, commercial buildings and utilities, pumps may operate quietly for years while supporting critical operations behind the scenes.
The real problem was not whether the pumps could operate. The problem was that the people responsible for maintaining them did not have continuous visibility into their operating condition. Between routine inspections, a motor could begin behaving differently without anyone immediately knowing.
That creates what I call operational blindness. The equipment is running somewhere in the physical world, but the people responsible for it cannot continuously see what is happening.
The objective was therefore straightforward: monitor the behaviour of the pump motors remotely and provide enough visibility for the maintenance team to recognise abnormal conditions earlier.
This is where Connect → See → Act becomes useful as a way of thinking about IoT.
CONNECT: Bring the Physical Asset Into the Digital World
The first step was to capture electrical current from the pump motors using current sensors. The readings were collected through an industrial controller before being transmitted through an industrial communications gateway to a cloud-based monitoring platform.
This created a digital connection to equipment that previously depended heavily on local observation and periodic inspection. Data from the physical asset could now travel continuously from the field to people who needed to monitor it.
But connectivity alone does not solve the operational problem. Sending thousands of readings to the cloud only creates more data unless someone can understand what those readings mean.
SEE: Understand What Is Happening
Once the data reached the monitoring platform, engineers could observe pump behaviour remotely. They could view current readings, examine operating patterns and compare historical behaviour without physically visiting the equipment.
This changes the maintenance question. Instead of simply asking, “Is the pump running?”, the team can begin asking, “Is the pump behaving normally?”
That distinction matters. A machine can still be operating while its behaviour is beginning to change. Continuous visibility gives maintenance teams an opportunity to notice those changes earlier.
ACT: Respond When Something Changes
The final stage is where monitoring becomes operationally useful. Thresholds can be established so that unusual conditions generate alerts, allowing responsible personnel to investigate rather than waiting for the next scheduled inspection or an obvious equipment failure.
The complete process becomes simple to understand:
Connect the equipment and collect its condition data. See its behaviour remotely and recognise changes. Act when the information indicates that attention may be required.
That is Connect → See → Act.
The lesson from this project is not really about pumps, sensors or cloud platforms. It is about removing an operational blind spot. The best IoT projects are often not those with the most technology. They are the ones that help people discover what is happening in their operations early enough to do something about it.
[Note: This is one of Favoriot‘s Commercial Use Case – Pump Monitoring]