Westminister Abbey
Existing Emergency Lighting Upgrade

Westminster Abbey is one of the most iconic buildings in the UK. Since 1066, the abbey has been the coronation church and is the final resting place of 17 monarchs.

Every day, thousands of people from all over the world visit this historical site and it is still used to this day for the highest profile of events, including Royal weddings so safety and compliance is always a top priority for those in charge of maintaining the buildings infrastructure and services.

With a difficult challenge to overcome, the principle of Westminster Abbey Infirmary asked Clevertronics ‘if’ they could provide a solution for some of the existing emergency light fittings that have some ‘unique and specific’ requirements. This included:

1. The new fitting had to blend in with the historical building

2. Battery life was very important to minimize disruption, but also to reduce the maintenance of the solution

3. A good lumen output was required to minimize the number of light fittings needed to aid the visual impact of the space We needed to make sure that the visual impact of the fitting was the kept to a minimum, whilst also providing the utmost of safety to the users of the building.”

With this quite unique project, there was not an ‘off the shelf’ solution that would tick all the boxes for the customer. Producing something from concept to production was the only way forward. Whilst others may walk away from such a brief, our ethos is always ‘life safety’ no matter what the challenge maybe. So, we decided to roll our sleeves up and get to work. Recessing the light fitting as you may normally do to reduce visual impact was not an option in this type of building and most surface mounted light fittings in the emergency lighting arena tend to be large. Also, smaller spotlight types of solutions are recessed but do have a ‘can’ / external extrusion solution.

After examining our portfolio of Emergency light fittings, we quickly concluded that the right product for the project would be Clevertronics Lifelight Pro. This product met the all the performance characteristics of the brief (350lms and long life battery technology) but required adaptation to meet the aesthetic aspects even though it is small, compact and finished to a high standard. To complete the offer, we needed a bespoke surface fixing solution. Our technical product design department did not waste any time in designing and adapting the Lifelight Pro and engineered and easy to fit solution to meet the last objective. Lifelight Pro SMC (Surface Mount Cylinder) was born. The solution now installed gives the customer the longest lifetime product on the market using the leading L10 Lithium Nanophosphate technology giving 50% longer battery life than any other on the market, a very high lumen output to guide people to safety if needed and a product that seamlessly blends within the historic environment. Better still, all this comes with an unrivalled 6 year warranty on everything, including the battery and a 12 year + design life. The customer was extremely happy with the Clevertronics service and flexibility to resolve the challenge set and to aid the safety of the users of the building.