LEADING organisations and experts are set to gather next month to explore how the problem of poor and absent emergency lighting installations can be tackled.

The Emergency Lighting Summit – which takes place in the Escape Zone at Europe’s biggest lighting event, LuxLive, on Thursday 16 November – comes at a time of heightened concern and awareness of fire safety standards following the loss of an estimated 80 lives at the Grenfell Tower fire in London on 13 June.

Organisations backing the event include BSI, British Approvals for Fire Equipment and the Industry Committee for Emergency Lighting.

Speakers include David Mooney of Atkins, Chris Auger of BAFE and Graham McKay of BSI while the chairman is Lux technical editor Alan Tulla.

‘Suppliers, specifiers, standards bodies and building owners urgently need to address a culture of complacency in the sector that has developed over recent decades,’ says LuxLive organiser Ray Molony.  ‘Risk assessments, a key tool of the standards, are not always conducted, even in major institutions and organisations, and those that are, are not always as thorough as they should be. Equally there is a lack of knowledge about emergency lighting requirements and standards.’

The summit – which takes place at 11.30am on Thursday 16 November – is complemented by a comprehensive series of presentations on emergency lighting to get facilities managers up to speed on the latest best practice recommendations, legislation and guidance. The new concept of ‘stay put’ lighting will be explained. The latest revisions to the Emergency Lighting Code of Practice (BS2566:1 2016) allows for a situation where building occupants can remain in the building during an electricity mains failure. Alan Daniels of P4 will look at the conditions that appertain to this new standard and what scheme designers and building users need to do to ensure that a ‘stay put’ scheme is compliant.

Expert Ian Watts will outline the major changes just applied to the standard and outline what’s required for an emergency lighting system to be compliant.

Consulting engineer Neil Foster of Couch Perry Wilkes will explore ways of managing emergency lighting across large estates. For instance, how do you manage various emergency lighting systems across multiple buildings? Is there a way to manage the testing centrally?

Andrew Gooding of Integral will look at the range of emergency testing options available from manual and simple stand-alone self-test, building and site-wide self-test systems with remote diagnostics and the range of protocols available from DALI to newer wireless solutions.

The Escape Zone is free and open to all, and takes place on the floor of the LuxLive, 15-16 November ExCeL London, simply register for your free pass at www.luxlive.co.uk

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