11 Jul 2016
Advanced portable appliance testing
instrumentation is helping the facilities management team at HM Winchester
Prison fulfil a range of essential health and safety responsibilities. Not only does this ensure the safety of all electrical equipment and appliances, but important safety checks on other services and items can be carried out and recorded as part of a comprehensive and integrated safety management audit.
Advanced portable appliance testing
instrumentation is helping the facilities management team at HM Winchester
Prison fulfil a range of essential health and safety responsibilities.
Following last year’s transfer of facilities
management services at a number of prisons to Carillion, the FM team at
Winchester is using a Seaward Apollo 600 tester to combine electrical testing
with a range of other workplace safety tasks.
To meet its health and safety
responsibilities, the in-house facilities management team at Winchester has established
rigorous inspection and testing procedures to ensure that all prison equipment and
systems remain safe for use by both staff and prisoners.
Importantly, as well as the safety of all
electrical equipment and appliances used on the prison site, this includes the
regular testing of water systems for Legionnaires disease, the condition of
emergency lighting systems and fire alarm control panels.
To help the team meet its
responsibilities, the focal point of the prison’s health and safety inspection
and testing programme is the multi-purpose Apollo 600 tester, supported by the
PATGuard 3 Elite software program.
Together, the specialist
tester and comprehensive software provides an all-round health and safety
management tool that combines appliance testing with a universal risk
assessment capability, sophisticated data collection, and the ability to
produce a wide range of reports, certificates and other safety documentation.
As part of the safe systems
of work established in the prison, the Apollo is used to produce bar codes to
identify all individual electrical appliances and other items of equipment
included in the health and safety inspections. This includes water tanks and
emergency lighting system components, so that the correct data and records are
stored automatically against each item as inspections are undertaken.
As part of the safe systems
of work established in the prison, the Apollo is used to produce bar codes to
identify all individual electrical appliances and other items of equipment
included in the health and safety inspections. This includes water tanks and
emergency lighting system components, so that the correct data and records are
stored automatically against each item as inspections are undertaken.
In addition, the instrument’s on board camera also enables images taken during visual
inspections and risk assessments to be tagged against records to provide
evidence of decisions taken and a traceable audit trail of all safety
conditions.
Jeff Foster, FM services
manager for Carillion at HMP Winchester, said: “With the huge variety of
equipment and appliances in use in the prison, there is a considerable time
saving in being able to identify items, carry out tests, record results and
make any notes as part of a fully streamlined process.
“Having all non-electrical
inspections alongside the results of traditional PAT tests, in the same system and
in the same format, also means that reports and certificates can be produced
quickly and easily.
“This all round capability
enables us to manage our safety responsibilities very effectively, and is
particularly helpful when inspections on different types of equipment are
carried out by different teams such as electricians and plumbers.”
At HMP Winchester, the
electrical team uses the battery powered Apollo 600 to carry out all of the
electrical safety tests required by the IET Code of Practice on the many
different appliances used in the prison’s workshop, office, kitchen,
recreational and accommodation areas.
In total some 6,500 items
are tested each year, with the weekly testing of all new equipment being
supported by comprehensive annual inspections and testing of everything in use
across the complete site.
As
well as portable appliances, the electrical team also carries out emergency
lighting system checks, with the plumbing team being responsible for
Legionnaires testing on the water supply.
In
both cases, the system checks and assessment records entered in the PATGuard 3
software enables the FM manager to log inspections and identify any issues
arising that can be flagged up in reports to senior staff and heads of
departments.
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