Saia-Burgess Controls: Programmable controllers and energy meters for building automation

Overview

The business traces back to SAIA AG, a Bern switchgear maker founded in 1920 that moved to Murten in 1951, and to Burgess Products, a British microswitch pioneer founded in 1935. The company history dates the first Saia programmable controller generation, the PCA, to 1978, and the PCD (process control device) generation to 1989, the year the two firms were combined as Saia Burgess. Controllers became a separate company, Saia-Burgess Controls AG, in 2001; the wider group went to Johnson Electric in 2005, and Honeywell bought the controls business in 2012.

SBC's position rests on longevity and open protocols rather than a closed building management suite. Its About page describes modular open- and closed-loop control products for buildings, industry and infrastructure, with most products used in heating, ventilation and air conditioning. The Saia PCD line has kept I/O compatibility across generations: the cyber-secure QronoX CPU still takes the PCD3 I/O modules, so a plant can change its controller without rewiring the field signals.

What sets SBC apart from many building controller makers is that one engineering tool, one controller family and one supervisory platform cover a heat pump plant, a tunnel, a data centre and a tenant meter board. That breadth suits integrators who want a single programmable platform across a portfolio of sites.

Offering

Automation stations

The PCD3 family is the core of the range: modular controllers with four I/O slots on the M3, M5 and M6 base units, compact M2 units with onboard I/O, remote I/O stations and more than 50 plug-in I/O modules. PCD1 and PCD2 controllers cover smaller and older installations. The QronoX IEC controller, PCD3.M6893, adds IEC 61131-3 programming with object-oriented methods, two Ethernet ports, RS-485, CAN and USB host, 1 GB of RAM, 4 GB of flash and expansion to 1,023 I/O points.

Operation and software

PCD7 web panels and room panels give local operation through the controllers' built-in web servers. The PG5 Controls Suite is the engineering tool for Saia PCD programs, with the Fupla graphical editor and a firmware download assistant. Saia PCD Supervisor, launched in 2017, is SBC's monitoring and control software for anything from a single HVAC plant to an enterprise control room. It is based on Tridium's Niagara 4 platform, and the current long-term support release is 4.15.

Electrical energy meters

The Axx range covers single- and three-phase DIN-rail meters with S0 pulse, S-Bus, M-Bus or Modbus interfaces. The ALE3 datasheet describes three-phase meters for direct connection up to 65 A with an RS-485 Modbus RTU port, while AWD3 and AWD1 models connect through 5 A current transformers.

How it is sold

SBC sells through system integrators, backed by local subsidiaries and a partner portal. Prices are not published.

Technology

Saia PCD controllers carry building and industrial protocols side by side. The PCD3 product index documents BACnet revisions 9 and 14, Modbus RTU and Modbus TCP, SBC's own S-Bus family (Ether-S-Bus and Profi-S-Bus), Profibus DP, LON and M-Bus libraries, FTP, e-mail and a built-in web server. BACnet conformance is independently tested: BTL listing 30220 covers six PCD3 CPUs on firmware 1.28.19 as BACnet Building Controllers, tested in October 2017 against protocol revision 14, with BACnet/IP, MS/TP master up to 115,200 bit/s, BBMD and routing between the two.

Security is where the newer hardware differs. The ISASecure certificate issued by exida, revision dated 31 January 2025, confirms that the QronoX PCD3.M6893 and its Honeywell-branded HPCD3.M6893 twin meet IEC 62443-4-1 and IEC 62443-4-2 at Capability Security Level 3 under ISASecure CSA 1.0.0, for firmware 5.x. The QronoX page adds a signed and encrypted operating system, an encrypted file system, role-based user management and OPC UA, MQTT, Modbus and Profinet over up to 14 interfaces. The certificate covers that CPU only; older PCD3 base units sit outside it.

Saia PCD Supervisor adds advanced BACnet utilities, an Ether-S-Bus driver, the PG5 icon gallery and a data import wizard to Niagara, with KNX IP and other drivers in its driver pack, so third-party meters and plant share one operator view. The meters are simple field devices: the ALE3 user guide documents one-based Modbus holding registers with fixed scaling, baud-rate detection from bus traffic and no built-in bus termination.

Customers

SBC publishes its references as case studies written with the integrator. In Cham, Switzerland, the Papieri Cham case study describes a new neighbourhood on the site of a former paper mill, developed by Cham Group AG, where integrator MST Systemtechnik is installing more than 80 Saia PCD3 controllers and remote I/O stations in 70 control cabinets between 2022 and 2035. The system is planned for about 300,000 data points and 20,000 field devices, coordinating a river power plant, photovoltaics, geothermal probes and heat pumps for around 1,000 flats and workplaces for 1,000 people. MST says the two firms have worked together for 30 years. The site received the Swiss Federal Office of Energy's 2000-Watt Site label in 2021 and a Watt d'Or in 2024.

The Stefan-Andres-Gymnasium reference covers a school for 1,600 pupils in Schweich, Germany, commissioned by the Landkreis Trier-Saarburg district. RAUCHER Building Automation GmbH installed 15 PCD3.M5340 controllers and five PCD7 web panels across three buildings, with BACnet building management, CO2 and presence-controlled ventilation, daylight-dependent lighting and sun-tracking blinds, managed from five central points.

Both references come from SBC's own literature, and neither reports measured energy savings.

Markets

Most SBC products go into heating, ventilation and air conditioning, according to its About page. The SBC website groups its applications into HVAC, room automation, electrical distribution, safety, data centres, hospitality, OEM machinery, healthy buildings and infrastructure such as tunnels, traffic, water, energy and district heating. The energy meters serve the electrical distribution and tenant billing side of the same projects.

Distribution runs through system integrators. When Honeywell agreed the purchase in October 2012, Contracting Business reported that SBC served European customers through more than 500 system integrators and that the deal strengthened Honeywell's energy controls presence in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. SBC now names its own subsidiaries in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Luxembourg and Belgium on the company page. The history page credits Honeywell's ownership with opening markets in Asia and the Middle East, and Honeywell-branded PCD3 CPUs such as the HPCD3.M6893 carry the technology into Honeywell's own channels. Outside the eight subsidiary countries, projects depend on partners and Honeywell offices rather than an SBC company.

Company

Saia-Burgess Controls AG is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Honeywell Group, according to the company page, and is headquartered at Route Jo-Siffert 4 in Givisiez, near Fribourg, where development, production and sales are based. It moved there from Murten in 2021; older documents such as the 2017 BTL listing still give the Bahnhofstrasse address in Murten.

The corporate path is long. According to the company history, SAIA AG belonged to Landis+Gyr from 1936 to 1986, was sold to Burgess Products in 1986 and was combined with it as Saia Burgess under Williams Holding in 1989. A management buyout in 1996 returned leadership to Switzerland, and the renamed Saia-Burgess Electronics AG listed on the stock market in 1998. Saia-Burgess Controls AG was set up in 2001 for the controller division, and Johnson Electric of Hong Kong acquired the whole group in 2005, keeping the controls company as a separate unit for controllers, operator panels and electricity meters.

Honeywell announced on 24 October 2012 that it would buy SBC from Johnson Electric for USD 130 million. Contracting Business reported USD 93 million of sales for the year to March 2012 and more than 300 employees, and said SBC would join the commercial controls portfolio of Honeywell's Environmental and Combustion Controls business. Law firm Lenz & Staehelin records the acquisition as completed on 1 February 2013. Since then SBC has launched Saia PCD Supervisor (2017) and QronoX (2020). As a Honeywell subsidiary it does not publish revenue or headcount.