Emergency lighting is an essential service provided by councils around Australia, and it’s critical that cost-effective solutions are deployed.
In August 2023, Redland City Council was reviewing the cost effectiveness of their existing emergency lighting. Poor wireless signal quality had meant that excessive router infrastructure had been necessary, making the cost of ownership, as well as testing and servicing, considerably higher than it might have been.
The council’s jurisdiction covers 537 square kilometres of South East Queensland, with several islands including North Stradbroke Island and the islands of Southern Moreton Bay, such as Macleay Island and Russell Island.
This presented a challenge not faced by most councils. Maintenance and testing of emergency and exit lighting at council properties on these islands required extensive travel for a tradesperson, which are only accessible by passenger ferries and vehicle barges. This is a time-consuming exercise for each property on every island, meaning that labour costs were substantial.
The council engaged electrical contractors ELS, which specialises in emergency lighting systems, to discuss their options.
“We discussed the fact that we’d been sending people out on ferries every six months just to do a test – and then they’re probably returning to do repairs – that’s a lot of labour costs. I recommended that they could reduce those labour costs significantly by implementing a system with remote monitoring capabilities,” said ELS Director Jason Foreman.
“We’d had a lot of experience working with the Stanilite NexusRF system, which is distributed by NHP. We’d always been happy with Nexus RF, so we set up a meeting with NHP and Redland City Council to offer a reliable, cost-effective solution.”
NHP supplied a single router for ELS to install in the for the refit for the council’s administration building. The router immediately meshed with all products over the three levels of office space, without a single communication issue.
“We also put a remote device in, so that the council team and I can log in and look at it whenever we need to,” Mr Foreman said.
Several buildings were clad in BONDEK, which meant the previous emergency and exit lighting manufacturer had provisioned for a router in each building, leading to higher costs. Thanks to the extended remote antenna fixed to the NexusRF routers, the signal from fittings to routers can now find an easy path without the building material inhibiting the signal. The council could therefore reduce the number of routers, delivering considerable cost savings.
“Unlike with some emergency lighting manufacturers, there’s no need for a computer there, which is one of the big advantages of NexusRF,” NHP Product Manager for Emergency Lighting Kieran McLeod said. “Our system starts with a device the size of an iPad. It’s a lot more cost effective to set up and less cumbersome in size, which translates to far superior mobility when maintaining the emergency lighting.”
According to Mr Foreman, “It was great to have Kieran from NHP joining me on a site walk through with me to assess the appropriateness of the Nexus RF with the wireless networks. I was able to lean on Kieran’s intimate knowledge of the product’s capabilities. We decided together where the new routers would go and how we could limit the number of new routers, because in the main admin building, there was five routers for 234 fittings and currently we’re only on one new Nexus RF router that’s got about 88 fittings on it. This reduced the amount of infrastructure needed by 80 per cent compared to the legacy system.”
ELS and NHP helped Redland City Council solve the problem of the high cost of labour in visiting each island regularly for testing and maintenance via the Stanilite Nexus RF remote monitoring system. Nexus RF’s capability to perform cloud-based testing removed the need for costly travel, which stands to save the council 67 per cent in labour hours.
At the time of publishing, 239 fittings have been installed across six council sites, with more planned.
To learn more, visit nhp.com.au/NexusRF
