Australian Embassy issues emergency lighting overhaul at Australia House in London. Australia House is a listed century old heritage building in the heart of the City of Westminster, London. Over its long life, Australia House has had numerous refurbishments and ‘fit outs’ creating multiple layers of complex emergency lighting solutions.
Due to the challenging nature of the project, international consultancy WSP engaged Clevertronics and together created a solution that consisted of two main elements:
1. Assess and ensure the life safety lighting met the current standards for safe egress during an emergency
2. Simplify and modernise the way the emergency lighting system was tested, maintained and operated Being such a fundamental part of the building’s operation, the project was separated into phases based on priority areas within the building.
The first phase consisted of replacing and upgrading the main egress and staircase emergency and exit lighting, as well as other high traffic areas. The second phase included additional egress areas and the rest of the building.
Due to the building’s age and complexity the major challenges of the project were the ‘unknown elements’ that could not be assessed effectively until the contractors were on site. A good example of this was understanding the existing routes taken by cable submains and final circuits to luminaires, many of which could not be ascertained without intrusive surveys.
The Clevertronics system, (see ‘Life Safety System Installed’ below), was carefully chosen and linked to meet the clients’ challenges. First and foremost, a top priority was given to provide sufficient lighting to cover all egress areas causing minimal disruption to the building when replacing the existing emergency lighting system.
To ‘link’ the system together, Zoneworks XT HIVE wireless mesh was chosen due to its continual monitoring and automatic testing of the emergency luminaires ensuring continued ongoing compliance. An additional benefit of using the wireless Zoneworks HIVE meant less hardware, cabling and commissioning. This was enthusiastically welcomed as additional high risk and intrusive works can equal high cost and delays.
Australia House is eligible for the Clevertronics Advantage Lifetime Support (ALS) program, as are all installed Clevertronics Zoneworks HIVE systems, therefore Australia House will receive free support for their HIVE system for the lifetime of the installation. ALS is made possible, in part, due to our
L10 Lithium Nanophosphate products, which has unrivalled warranty and have been engineered with a 12+ service life in mind. (See website for details of our ALS Program). This project is a crowning achievement by all parties involved. 400 plus emergency luminaires have been installed, commissioned, and tested. Full training has been deployed to the client and facility manager to ensure that they are able to confidently use their new HIVE testing system. As Jason Li of WSP says, “We’ve had great responses and feedback from the team with regards to the ease and simplicity of the Zoneworks XT HIVE interface. With a few clicks, the team can now automate scheduled tests of the luminaires on a consistent monthly basis and plan for a yearly 3hr test. Better still, they can visually assess the performance of the system as the installation completely simplifies the overall management of each luminaire.”
Continuing, Jason describes “In the past this would have taken days to inspect each month at great difficulty and expense due to the nature of the building. Now being automated, it directly reduces labour time and costs and any likelihood of human error. This single, easily manageable, emergency lighting system is the future and is certainly something we will be using more of.”
With a difficult challenge to overcome, the principle of Westminster Abbey Infirmary asked Clevertronics to provide a solution compatible with existing emergency light fittings designed to suit a heritage building application.
Find Out MoreIntegration of a new modern build with an existing 120-year building was a huge challenge in itself. All heritage listed guidelines had to be followed along with allowing for a modern monitored system and the hardware that is required to make it function.
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