Emergency Monitoring

The Fire Safety Risk Assessment legally requires that all premises accessible by employees and the public should undergo ongoing maintenance and testing of emergency lighting.
 
Monthly function testing and yearly duration testing is recommended, but this makes the manual method – turning a key switch on a wall, observing the result, and maintaining the logbook record – time-consuming for those tasked with managing emergency lighting at multiple sites.

Automatic testing systems are common in new buildings but not in older estates. In some cases, a single FM team might be responsible for multiple sites – such as at social housing estates, retail chains, hospitals, or university campuses. Maintaining consistent standards without automation to streamline the process is challenging.

Automating emergency lighting testing on an estate-wide basis and even in older sites is possible.

Cloud technology enables those managing lighting across multiple sites to view the status of emergency installations remotely on a single interface. Retrofitting existing buildings with smart devices – IR sensors, emergency lighting and heat sensors, air purification sensors and conditioners, and even smart blinds – removes the need for continuous safety checks on site and improves the accuracy of fault detection through real-time system updates – so management teams know which part of a building needs attention.

Connecting disparate estate-wide installations – such as university campuses, hospital trusts, social housing, and hotels – to a central infrastructure enables remote monitoring of luminaires and components that may need maintenance. These emergency light installation costs are very manageable with an existing central infrastructure becoming more efficient specifically with wiring and forerunning online capabilities.
 

Having automated processes in the daily management of emergency systems enables secure record-keeping and greater accuracy in the log of every test, along with the result, and any previously detected issues. 

Test reports can be accessed remotely and non-compliance issues and maintenance requirements can be visualised and implemented remotely. Each test is triggered through an online end-user device such as a laptop or tablet.

Although automated technological devices can prove costly by design, creation and instalment, the long-term cost and operational benefits, and enhanced security reliability, outweigh the short-term investment.

Automated test systems require higher capital investment but have lower maintenance costs. They reduce manual trips to sites, monthly and yearly testing and reporting, and mitigate maintenance. Standard payback is within three years. 

The number of different platforms being used across sites and estates can become overwhelming. However, by hosting an entire emergency lighting system on a single interface the issue is resolved, enhancing and streamlining the maintenance and management of emergency lighting systems to provide security and safety for all and in complete compliance with building regulations and the law.  

Reporting can be done with the aid of a basic guide document so no training is required. This enables scalability and transparency for various users of the system. 

Each building may require a different methodology to allow for efficient installation and commissioning of its automated test system. For example, new commercial buildings are often equipped from the first day with digital wired or IP cabled solutions. 
Older buildings may be better suited to wireless technology because of the difficulty and cost of installing a control wiring system within concrete walls or ceilings, and disruption caused to the building’s main installation.

These platforms report information to a single cloud interface where data is stored and analysed, providing maintenance teams with a single source of data, regardless of the technology deployed in any single building.




Read the full article on the Facilitate website here.