Smart Carbon Monoxide Detector Saves Two Lives
- 5th February 2016
- admin
The unique Smart Compliance CO detector has saved two lives during recent trials with a small group of social landlords, suggesting a wide-scale use would yield dramatic improvements in public safety.
When Smart Compliance developed and patented a carbon monoxide monitor which is able to communicate remotely via SMS, reporting its own status and alerting landlords to carbon monoxide incidents, tampering, or power outages, our designers were confident that a wide scale roll out would carry significant benefits for large-scale landlords. Now, following months of trials around the UK, the smart detector, which has received the enthusiastic backing of the Energy Innovation Centre and several Gas Distribution Networks, has saved the lives of two workers in separate incidents in Lancaster and Kirklees.
“On both occasions,” said Smart Compliance director Billy Mitchell, “sub contractors, without the knowledge of the social landlords concerned, were using petrol-powered tools whilst carrying out maintenance work in properties which happened to be part of the Smart Detector trial. Neither had ensured adequate ventilation, and one had covered the detector with a towel!
“However, our detector doesn’t just sound an alarm on site. Its unique and crucial feature is that it reports the incident by SMS to our central portal, alerting whoever has been chosen to monitor that group of detectors. In this way a single person can monitor thousands or properties simultaneously, maintaining 100% compliance with legal or duty of care considerations, and effectively protecting the lives of occupants. Thanks to the SMS message received in these cases, immediate action was taken and the housing managers concerned were able to react in time to prevent a further build up of life-threatening carbon monoxide.”
Current carbon monoxide monitoring in the social housing sector is subject to regional variations but the basic approach is the same, requiring monitors to have physical compliance checks to ensure they are working properly and haven’t been tampered with. The efficiency with which the Smart Compliance system makes it possible to provide greater tenant safety, and unarguable compliance with current and likely future regulation, is ground-breaking. Smart Compliance believes the reduction in man-hours currently devoted to checking traditional monitors, and in the very high cost of call outs to false alarms, will make this modern, high-tech system highly appealing to forward-thinking landlords across the housing spectrum, and to local authority and social housing finance directors.
Several of the initial ‘Discovery Projects’, or pilot schemes are now over 6 months old and the results have encouraged the GDNs to extend the trial period further into 2016.
“Even within the limited scale of these Discovery Projects,” confirmed Mr Mitchell, “we have potentially saved two lives within the last 4 months. One only has to calculate what the statistics would be if the system was to be rolled out over tens or hundreds of thousands of homes to see just how valuable remote monitoring can be, and we are keen to talk to other housing authorities who would like to get on board with this efficient, high-tech approach to such an important issue.”