Emergency Light Testing

Emergency lighting at your commercial premises is imperative in cases of fire or power failure. This type of lighting is installed to help protect staff, customers and visitors and enable them to easily find emergency exits or escape routes if there is an emergency. As an employer it’s your responsibility to maintain your emergency lighting and carry out regular testing with a trained engineer. This is part of the Health & Safety Act At Work (1974) where it states that it’s an employer’s duty to make sure that there are no dangers in the workplace, keeping staff safe. Of course, if your emergency lighting is not operating efficiently it must not be ignored because it could pose a hazard in future. ECMS provides commercial businesses a full emergency light testing service using accredited lighting engineers. All of our engineers are friendly, reliable and endeavour to complete emergency light testing efficiently.

What Testing Can You Do?

It’s useful to conduct your own testing every day just to make sure emergency lighting is operating efficiently. All this entails is a simple walk around your premises and visually checking your lighting systems. Once a month, check the light switches are operating properly, this is known as a “flick test” and is when you switch lights on and off quickly. This checks batteries and fittings are fully operational. You should note whether they instantly respond.

Professional Manual Testing

We recommend booking in one of our lighting engineers to visit your premises once a year to test all emergency lighting appropriately and to make sure it adheres to the British standard. To conduct this test, your ECMS engineer will implement a mains power failure on your normal lighting which will initiate your emergency lighting system through a battery supply. The testing is done manually and lasts approximately 3 hours. It usually involves one single switch cutting out the building’s power and then the tester must check the entire building. Once power is restored, the tester must re-check the entire building’s system again. There is also an automatic test but this is only applicable if you have self-testing emergency lighting installed.

Additionally, every three years, there should be a full duration discharge test which can only be carried out by a fully trained engineer. During lighting inspection and test of emergency lighting our engineers will check that your lighting meets the standard. All findings at any stage of testing will always be reported back to you and recorded appropriately in your emergency lighting log-book which is a requirement in the emergency lighting Code Of Practice. The logbook should have all the information on who installed your emergency lighting as well as a design guide and any information relating to maintenance, testing and repairs.

Convenient Light Testing

The team at ECMS are available at your convenience so minimising any disruption to your business and we recommend conducting emergency lighting testing outside of office hours. Additionally, we guarantee all our work and we price competitively.

To find out more about Emergency Lighting Testing call ECMS or drop us a line.