Background

West Lancashire Borough Council, or West Lancs for friends, is a district in Lancashire, and the home of around 100,000 people. The two main towns are Ormskirk and Skelmersdale. West Lancs already has quite a few council offices and buildings, including care homes on the Mymesh system.

The Council has now embarked on a roll-out of Mymesh across their Social Housing estates with the main objective to test and monitor the emergency lighting. This can be sheltered accommodation, individual houses or apartment blocks. 

Challenge

West Lancs has several hundreds of blocks in their portfolio that they rent out. As the council the responsibility is theirs to maintain the properties and guarantee that they are safe. The lighting, and more specifically the emergency lighting, is an important part of that. The Standards dictate that the Emergency Lighting must undergo a monthly Function test, and yearly Duration test (lasting 3 hours). There is a significant maintenance operation associated with this to ensure that this is executed and reported. Apart from the cost, there is the matter of compliance. How to ensure that this is done?

Benefits

West Lancs does not have to pay monthly visits to each of the hundreds of blocks anymore. The results are delivered automatically to the inbox. A site visit is only required in case of failures, which are reported via the system. Furthermore, the information of number of discharges, battery charge level will enable a predictive maintenance schedule for battery replacement when the time comes.

For 1 housing block this can be done manually, but when you manage hundreds it gets more challenging.