Emergency Lighting – Testing and Inspection

Australian Standard AS/NZS 2293.2 1995 relates to inspection and maintenance of Emergency and Evacuation lighting for buildings.

Ensure compliance with Occupational Health and Safety obligations, as employers have a legal ‘Duty of Care’ to ensure that Emergency and Exit Lights work adequately, in a power outage, or other emergency, so people are able to quickly exit their way out of the building.

Emergency lighting is an essential service that is quite often forgotten, until an accident or catastrophe happens in the event the power fails in your building, your emergency and exit lights must remain lit for at least 90 minutes, to allow people safe passage out of the building. It is imperative to maintain all emergency and exit lighting in commercial buildings, to comply with relevant building codes in accordance with Australian Standards (AS/NZS 2293.2).

You will have greater peace of mind in knowing that your emergency exit lighting is fully operative and you will comply with exit testing regulations.

The Standard instructs that all Emergency evacuation lighting systems shall be inspected and maintained in accordance with the relevant procedures specified in the Standard, and that the inspection and maintenance procedures shall be carried out only by persons having qualifications, and experience suitable for this type of work.

The Standard sets out the periodic inspection and maintenance procedures which are necessary to ensure that emergency evacuation lighting systems will be in a state of readiness for operation at all times. It applies to central and single-point emergency lighting systems, as defined in AS/NZS 2293.1

The Standard instructs that all Emergency evacuation lighting systems shall be inspected and maintained in accordance with the relevant procedures specified in the Standard and that the inspection and maintenance procedures shall be carried out only by persons having qualifications and experience suitable for this type of work.

All maintenance records must be in the form of hard copy record tags or log books. Electronic copies may also be used.

Six Monthly Tests

• All emergency luminaires and exit signs shall be checked to ensure that they function satisfactorily. Any defective lamps shall be replaced and a match of lamp technology and lamp colour must be used.

• Where manual discharge test facilities are provided, the following procedure shall be carried out to check the operation of the emergency lighting system:

• Turn the battery charger off, simulate a mains failure and carry out a partial discharge test at 100 per cent of the installed emergency lighting load. Allow the test to continue until the operation of all emergency luminaires and exit signs has been checked, this test must meet the AS2293 requirement for duration of 90 minutes.

• After tests have been completed the tester must restore the system to normal operation, turn the battery charger on and recharge the batteries of each fitting.

• Where automatic discharge test facilities are provided, a visual check shall be made of the operational status of all emergency luminaires and exit signs by means of the indications given at the controller or associated indicator panel.

•  Those units which fail the discharge test must be either repaired and restored to normal condition or replaced.

Twelve Monthly Tests

• As for the six monthly tests, and

• Inspect fittings and clean reflective surfaces as necessary.

Dont Stress

Don’t stress about making sure you are compliant. Contact Urban Group Maintenance Department and they can arrange for your regular Emergency Lighting assessments and Checks and carry out all required procedures for you.