Advanced test technology provides safety management at Winchester jail
Advanced electrical test instrumentation is helping the facilities management team at HM Winchester Prison fulfil a range of essential electrical and more general 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 prison is using a Seaward Apollo 600 tester to combine electrical testing with a range of workplace safety tasks.
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.
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.
The instrument’s onboard 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.
The electrical tests and checks, along with other safety records entered in the PATGuard 3 software enables the facilities manager to log inspections and identify any issues that can be reported to senior staff and department heads.
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