UMC Sint-Radboud

The UMC St. Radboud hospital is leaving nothing to chance Safety is an absolute top priority for University Medical Centre St Radboud in Nijmegen. The hospital is leaving nothing to chance. "The emergency lighting must enable us to safely evacuate patients, visitors and personell, but also safely stop all medical procedures", says Bernard Baltussen, consultant of the Projectbureau Nieuwbouw. For this new development project the hospital opted for ETAP's central ESM system and K7 LED luminaires. 8,000 devices, 1 system The UMC St Radboud hospital covers a floor area in excess of 50,000 m². The hospital is currently being completely renovated, a project in different phases that will run until 2018. Phase 3 was recently completed and tackled the surgery building and a part of the diagnostics building. ETAP is responsible for the emergency lighting in the new buildings. Once the renovation project is ready, it will have more than 8,000 emergency lighting luminaires, making it one of the biggest emergency lighting installations in the Netherlands. Evacuation not evident "Organising an evacuation in a hospital is far from evident", says Bernard Baltussen, Projectbureau Nieuwbouw Consultant of the University Medical Centre St Radboud. "Most of the people - visitors and patients in particular - are not, or hardly, familiar with the building. This makes the well thought-out and reliable lighting of stairwells, corridors and other escape routes vital. And also, it is not possible to immediately evacuate all areas. Medical procedures and treatments cant be stopped just like that without risk to patients. Vital areas such as operating theatres, intensive care and ER need to remain operational." Maximum reliability, low maintenance The hospital combines a self-contained emergency lighting concept - whereby all luminaires have their own battery - with a centralised monitoring and management system. "All luminaires need to be connected to the centralised ESM management system (ETAP Safety Manager)", says ETAP's Bob van Tiel, who is co-ordinating the project. "This makes management and maintenance a lot easier as well. Dutch law specifies that the status of emergency lighting needs to be checked every week. Usually this means a physical tour of the building. Not only is this time-consuming, it is also particularly impractical in a hospital where nursing staff is at work around the clock." The hospital now monitors its luminaires using the centralised ESM management system. "Every week a print-out is made of the entire emergency lighting system. The manager immediately receives an overview of possible defects and errors, and is able to tell the maintenance team where to go. The system also generates a report that can be submitted to the authorities." LEDs all the way The hospital has resolutely chosen for LED luminaires. "Their long lifecycle played an important role in this choice of course", says Bob van Tiel. "LEDs last more than 10 years. Not only does this bring down the cost of maintenance, it also means the customer need not worry about the emergency lighting for the next ten years. This is a huge advantage in an environment where costs are under increasing pressure." The entire building will be equipped with K7 luminaires. "The K7 is extremely versatile", explains Bob van Tiel. "The series contains luminaires for signage, anti-panic and escape route lighting, and is available as surface-mounted, recessed and suspended luminaires. Not only does this ensure a uniform style throughout the buildings, it also makes the maintenance a lot simpler. For instance, you only need to stock one type of battery."