recent survey*, found that 56 per cent of European businesses fail to update their safety systems following refurbishments in which internal areas are reorganized.
Aside from the obvious safety of workers, UK managers have found themselves fined and even imprisoned due to a lack of compliant emergency lighting. Tata Steel was fined £200k when the lights in their factory failed during an accident. In another case, the owner of a hotel on Blackpool’s promenade was imprisoned for 18 months for lack of emergency lighting system.
Emergency luminaires, exit signage and infill lighting must be carefully positioned to provide sufficient lighting to enable safe exit from a building in the event of failure of the normal mains supply General areas must comply with a minimum 0.5 lux and escape routes to reach minimum 1 lux
The battery back-up required for the emergency lighting system need to maintain their light levels for minimum 1 hour, however industry standard today is 3 hours.
Servicing and maintenance of emergency lighting systems must be carried out at regular intervals to ensure that the system is in operational condition. This is likely to be performed within the periodic testing routine.
According to BS EN 50172:2004 / BS 5266-8:2004 every emergency lighting system must be tested on a monthly basis. This is normally achieved by the use of key switches operated by the user/owner of the scheme. In addition to this a full power cut to the lighting system should be performed on an annual basis.
There are significant cost and energy savings to be made through the installation of an energy efficient emergency lighting scheme. Through conducting detailed site surveys and analysis, we can identify where your lighting can be improved, put together a comprehensive business case, outlining the full cost and benefits to your business and the range of options available to you.
For more information on energy efficient emergency lighting please get in touch with www.polarislight.com or +44 (0)20 8133 2554
We’ll be more than happy to help!
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