ICEL assists with the BAFE scheme for emergency lighting installations, which provides assurance of competence in the design, installation, commissioning and maintenance of emergency lighting installations.

Premises owners and facilities managers are responsible for ensuring that their emergency lighting systems adequately protect their occupants. The Fire Safety Order (FSO) requires engineers working on emergency lighting installations to be competent. It is also recommended in the Guidance documents that they are third party certified for their expertise. Bearing this in mind, ICEL believes that it is essential to raise awareness amongst emergency lighting designers, installers and maintainers of the need for them to be able to convince users of their competence in providing and servicing an appropriate emergency lighting system.

ICEL evaluation of the FSO’s impact has shown that building owners and facilities managers have little guidance on how to check the competence of companies under consideration to work on their emergency lighting systems. In addition, the work is more difficult than it once was because, instead of merely applying a set of prescriptive rules, installations now have to be risk-assessed for their contribution to the required safety. Since this applies retrospectively, emergency lighting installers must be able to give advice on the requirements for both new buildings and any necessary upgrades to existing premises.

However, help is now available in the form of the newly introduced BAFE 203-4 scheme, which covers the design, installation, commissioning and maintenance of emergency lighting systems. It is delivered independently through BAFE-licensed, UKAS-approved certification bodies, and it recognises the competencies required.

The scheme provides third party accreditation on the following aspects:

 

  • Emergency lighting companies must use suitably trained engineers who have the necessary equipment and experience to demonstrate their competency.

 

  • Building owners and facilities managers should be confident that the emergency lighting system installed is appropriate and that they will be provided with documentation to show fire inspectors or insurance companies that they have exercised ‘due diligence’ in selecting suitably qualified engineers to work on their system.

The manufactures believe this scheme will give the operators of premises and facilities managers confidence that registered suppliers of services will be trained and experienced with the necessary knowledge and tools to ensure that the emergency lighting system is appropriate for the application concerned.

Tel: 020 8677 0718

Email: info@icel.co.uk

Web: www.icel.co.uk