Digitising social housing applications to drive efficiency

Jakub joined Parallax in October 2024 as our Software Engineer Apprentice, following a standout placement year with the UTC Leeds. Even during his part-time placement, he impressed the team with his mature approach, rapid learning curve, and relentless curiosity. Now full-time, and nearing the end of his apprenticeship, he’s become a core part of the Parallax family. Fuelled by an insatiable appetite for knowledge and an equally strong love of coffee.

Why Jakub Stands Out

“Traditionally the solution to the problem has been simply to aerate the water – using mechanical interventions such as pumps, diffusers and splashbox paddles. But as we all know from widespread news coverage, water habitats are a fragile ecosystem – and can go from normal to hazardous very quickly. Activating the interventions is usually too little too late, as fish deaths tend to happen all at once. So the answer in commercial fish farms has been to run these machines 24/7, at immense cost and energy consumption.

“One commercial fish farm, for example one we know in Saudi Arabia, can run 5,000 aerators non-stop. Given that it costs us £6,000 per aerator per year in energy bills, we could see clearly how unsustainable this approach to water quality management is.”

Driving Innovation from Day One

“We needed to build software, firmware and hardware to monitor and predict both water quality and external (environmental, chemistry and weather) factors, in order to activate the right interventions at the right time. Crucially, given that this also means running certain machines very infrequently instead of permanently, we also needed to be able to remotely monitor, maintain and test them so they wouldn’t fail at the critical moment.

“The AI layer transforms vast amounts of raw environmental data into actionable predictions, risk alerts, optimisations, and planning insights. The kit itself can be installed in minutes, connected to mains or solar power and via IoT connectivity to centralised monitoring, so it can run in any location.”

Bringing Teams Together – Parallax Radio

“We don’t need to look far to see another news story about the water quality crisis. Even the Olympics had their own news headlines when the River Seine was feared to be off limits for water events – before a massive cleanup operation saved the day. Until our technology was developed, there was no way of remotely monitoring, predicting and responding to water quality data in this way, so it’s truly a world first.”