15/04/2021
Preventing accidents on a business premises is vital to ensuring staff and customer safety, protecting reputations and creating legal compliance. No business wants to think about accidents and injury but they do happen and planning for them using a variety of safety features is the key to preventing or lessening the extent of them should they occur. Emergency lighting is designed to illuminate hazardous areas, highlight emergency exits and keep everyone in the building safe and part of achieving this means regularly booking emergency lighting maintenance.
Why?
Emergency lighting maintenance is carried out by a qualified individual like an electrician and is measured against certain frameworks. By their very nature, emergency lighting plans for the worst and so runs on a backup battery in case of a total power outage or break in a circuit that could otherwise cause them to turn off and put people at risk. Like most batteries, overtime the power supply within depletes meaning they may no longer be up to the task, but without testing them, there is no way to know.
What?
Maintenance involves simulating a power outage, to check that the battery lasts for the amount of time it is supposed to so that if there were a real emergency, they would remain illuminated for up to three hours which would likely be enough time for everyone to use them to navigate to emergency exits avoiding hazardous areas and get to safety.
When?
The functionality of emergency lighting needs to be tested every month by simulating a power outage for a short term and ensuring the battery is powering up. Once a year, the battery should be tested for its full duration of 3 hours to ensure it works to full capacity.
For more information about emergency lighting maintenance or to book our services, call us on 01782 595 600.