Lifts upgrade in line with fire safety requirements.
Reason for contacting Clear:
Notting Hill Genesis is one of the largest housing associations in South East England, with around 55,000 properties in London and a further 9,000 in the home counties and East Anglia, providing affordable homes for approximately 170,000 people.
A fire risk assessment had identified the requirement for two lifts at the Notting Hill Genesis Bakersfield site, Crayford, North London, to be upgraded to ensure their suitability as firefighting lifts, providing a facility to assist firefighters to move vertically with more ease through a building in the event of a fire.
Problems/issues identified by Clear
A priority for any firefighter lift is to always ensure a seamless power supply with no outages, regardless of if the building is affected by fire. Naturally, this requires a secondary power source which will be immediately activated should the primary power source fail. Clear was tasked with identifying the optimum solution to deliver the required uninterrupted power supply.
The Clear Response
Clear critiqued the fire risk assessment that had been undertaken and reviewed the various options. Rather than opting for a generator which could be prone to error and requires additional storage space, Clear recommended a dedicated secondary power supply directly from a separate UK Power Networks transformer.
Clear worked on the design and specification of the power supplies from the new UKPN service into the changeover switch and distribution boards. The required works were put out to tender to various contractors and Clear was responsible for appointing the contractor most suited to undertake the project. Clear was actively involved in all phases of the installation and ensured the project ran on time and within the agreed budget.
Once the works had been completed, Clear liaised with a specialist lifts consultant to ensure that all electrical lift requirements had been met.
End result
Both lifts were signed off by the independent specialist lift consultant having met all the criteria consistent with the provision of a firefighter lift facility, providing added peace of mind to the housing association that the appropriate steps had been taken to safeguard residents.
