Emergency lighting will also assist fire fighters, paramedics etc to gain access and deal with the conditions. In short, good emergency lighting saves lives.
In recent years, fires in the UK have claimed the lives of over 700 people annually with almost 100 of these deaths occurring in buildings other than domestic dwellings. These statistics prove that the risks still exist but, in comparison to the years before emergency lighting became widespread, the figures represent a dramatic improvement.
Setting the standard
Britain leads the world in providing the very best emergency lighting systems. At the forefront of this important work has been the Industry Committee for Emergency Lighting (ICEL).
Because of the speed of technical advances in the 1970s, national product standards were not sufficiently advanced to ensure the reliability and effectiveness of the new breed of emergency lighting products. Therefore two of the key trade federations combined to form ICEL so that the specialist knowledge within their membership could be used to generate workable specifications.
ICEL quickly produced safety and performance standards and worked in partnership with BSI to operate a product approval scheme. Through the years ICEL has continued to produce a range of technical standards, product registration schemes and application guides.
The original product approval scheme was adopted as a BSI Kitemark scheme and many of the ICEL publications have become British and European Standards. Accordingly ICEL has reduced its involvement in standards and, believing that the importance of quality was now accepted in the UK market, returned to projects of a more commercial nature.
Alarming trends
However, during the past year there has been a trend towards the use of low quality emergency lighting products. As purchase prices spiralled downwards some suppliers have abandoned value engineering techniques and have simply cheapened their products, resulting in inferior and in some cases unsafe emergency lighting equipment.
The most worrying aspect is that due to the lack of strong specifications from building designers and low demand for Kitemark-certified products, there is now little to obviously differentiate a good product from a bad one. The client could be under the belief that one emergency lighting luminaire is the same as the next.
Emergency lighting is a safety product and to be safe it must work. The differences between products can only be clearly shown by testing to appropriate standards. Specific concerns include how electronic circuits operate, the quality and suitability of the rechargeable batteries used, the flammability of the plastic parts and the light level and distribution.
The reasons that these changes cause concern can be summarised as follows:
Many of the cheaper batteries have typically been designed for regular charge/discharge cycles and much lower operating temperatures. Although they will appear to operate satisfactorily within a self contained luminaire when new they will quickly lose capacity and fail totally within two years;
Quality through labelling
It is relatively easy to manufacture an emergency luminaire that will produce light but how much, and how useful it will be, depends on how well the product components have been designed.
ICEL recognises that it is currently very difficult to determine which products are good and which are bad. Therefore it has been agreed that a labelling scheme must be introduced to differentiate the high quality products. Clearly any marking scheme must be based on factual, qualitative issues and must carry the trust of the users if it is to gain respect in the market. ICEL is discussing possible long-term approval systems with appropriate recognised bodies but in the interim it intends to generate new ICEL labelling schemes to designate quality products designed to comply with appropriate standards.
ICEL's first step will be to determine that its membership remains committed to quality. Any member that is not operating a registered ISO 9000 quality system (or is not in the process of registration) will be removed from the ICEL membership.
Every ICEL company will be required to formally declare that all of its products comply with the appropriate European safety and performance standards. These declarations will concentrate on the specific issues relating to product safety and reliability criteria such as the design life of batteries and flammability of plastic parts. ICEL intends to further develop these requirements in the future and to enhance existing standards by introducing straightforward methods of assessing components within the application of each product.
With all of the proposals in place ICEL will be able to offer a labelling scheme that identifies an acceptable emergency lighting product. Clients will be able to specify an ICEL-marked product and verification will be a simple process of looking for the authorised ICEL label.
Risk assessment: icel 1008
ICEL has issued a new document providing advice on emergency lighting risk assessment. ICEL 1008 covers the need for risk assessment and documentation and leads the reader through the role of emergency lighting, explains standard tests and provides a model declaration of conformity and a completion certificate. The guide also offers practical information on escape route luminaire spacing and risk assessment methods, while also directing readers towards its other publications, of which ICEL 1008 is the latest in the series. ICEL 1008: Emergency lighting risk assessment guide, cost £35 and is available from ICEL, Swan House, 207 Balham High Road, London SW17 7BQ. Call 0181-675 5432 for more information.What’s new in emergency lighting
Harvard Engineering’s
Guide-LITE
Emergi-Lite
The Ventilux Auto Test
Spel
Source
Electrical and Mechanical Contractor
Postscript
David Wright is chairman of ICEL.
