St Vincent’s Care Services
Existing Emergency Lighting Upgrade

St Vincent’s Care Services is a leading and trusted provider of aged care and retirement services with 17 sites across Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria.

St Vincent’s is committed to ensuring a secure and safe environment for all residents, relatives and staff and therefore having a compliant emergency lighting system is a key priority.

When Shane Moore, owner of Moore Electrical took a call from Tony Watson, Maintenance Manager at St Vincent’s about reviewing the Emergency & Exit lighting in their Toowoomba facility which was continually failing, he called in Clevertronics to audit the site and recommend the best solution.

The section under review had 73 emergency and exit lights that were NiCd manual test fittings and the energy maintenance and testing costs of the existing system was approximately $63,500 over a 10 year period.

“Each six-month test interval was exposing the many failures in the existing system, which in turn was costing a significant amount to maintain”, explained Shane.

Another challenge was the onsite log-book which was updated during each test although with multiple contractors performing the testing, information about the location, device reference, switchboard and fitting maintenance was not available for each fitting.

Shane Moore added, “The log-book is always a source of frustration as it is either missing, incorrect or lacking the information required.”

Outcome – The audit identified an opportunity to reduce costs by $46,700 providing a total savings of 81% of savings over a 10 year period by upgrading the site to a Clevertest Plus system using the L10 Nanophosphate range.

The Clevertest Plus system is the lowest cost system on the market and combines a self-testing feature with CleverSparky, which is a mobile and web app that manages the Emergency and Exit lighting.

Darren Katsoolis, Property and Infrastructure Manager at St Vincent’s approved the upgrade based on the savings the audit identified and the advantages of having the site’s compliance managed via a dedicated system that is visible to his team at St Vincent’s.

The audit identified an opportunity to reduce costs by $46,700 providing a total savings of 81% of savings over a 10 year period by upgrading the site to a Clevertest Plus system using the L10 Nanophosphate range.

Installation & Set up – The CleverSparky web app was preferred over using the mobile app to set up the site data due to its efficiency when there are 20+ fittings. During installation, a register of fitting details was collated, which included the serial number, device reference, switchboard and location.

Before the data was entered, the Clevertest Plus feature was activated by cycling the circuit breaker in a prescribed sequence which also put the fittings into a test.

It is important to note that all L10 Nanophosphate fittings are compatible with the Clevertest Plus system, but the feature needs to be activated. While the fittings were in test, the register of information was transferred to the CSV template and uploaded into the web app.

The site was now set up and visible also on the mobile app where the test results were collected. The final step was to collect the results of each fitting by observing the visual indicator on the status LED. As expected all the fittings passed the test which was indicated by the status LED showing a fast amber & green light, so were marked as passed using the batch result function.

If a failed flashing sequence is indicated, the status LED indicator should be scanned using the app, this will report the failure reason and log it in the fault tab. The audit identified an opportunity to reduce costs by $46,700 providing a total savings of 81% of savings over a 10 year period by upgrading the site to a Clevertest Plus system using the L10 Nanophosphate range.

With the installation and set up complete the final step was to produce a device details report and the test report for the facility, which was completed on the mobile app.

The Maintenance Manager and the Property and Infrastructure Manager at St Vincent’s both have access to their site data on the CleverSparky platform so they can produce reports at any time. The Clevertest Plus system was set up and commisioned within three hours which included the initial two-hour discharge test.

Shane was impressed with the speed of setting the system up. “I was expecting the set up of the system to take longer, but it was fast and seamless” explained Shane. “Uploading the data to the web app while the fittings were in test saved time and the pass or fail feature is unbelievably quick and efficient.”

The site is expected to deliver $46,700 in energy and maintenance savings which will be documented in the CleverSparky App by using the Maintenance reporting function.