Clevertronics partnered with CityFM to modernise emergency lighting across Coles stores, improving compliance, reliability and maintenance efficiency.
Background – Facilities management in retail applications
As one of the world’s largest privately owned facilities management companies, employing over 13,000 people with divisions across five continents, CityFM has an outstanding reputation for providing facilities management solutions to some of the world’s biggest companies.
In Australia, CityFM’s expertise is proven by their longstanding contract with the Coles Group, Australia’s second largest retailer, who have placed all 800 of their supermarkets in the company’s care.
As defective emergency lighting is a serious public safety issue, when it came to deciding who to trust to help them uphold their legal obligations, it’s not surprising that CityFM turned to Clevertronics.
National Regional Technical Manager for CityFM, Hector Bright, explains why: “Right at the core of the success and longevity of the CityFM and Coles Group relationship is CityFM’s ability to innovate consistently across the full-service offering. Within this, emergency and exit lighting is pivotal and it’s my job to make sure the best and most reliable products are installed,” he says.
“We chose Clevertronics as our emergency and exit lighting partner because they were, and are, the most innovative company working in that space.”
The Challenge – Manual testing made proving compliance difficult
“Doing a full retrofit with Zoneworks in our older stores was not possible, but we knew we had to do something to improve the emergency and exit lighting and maintenance approach. The manual method was no longer serving us. In fact, we increasingly recognised compliance risks associated with it,” continues Bright.
The existing six-monthly manual testing process relied on technicians physically checking each fitting, recording results in paper logbooks, and transferring that data into spreadsheets. This made the process time-consuming, inconsistent, and vulnerable to errors or omissions—creating both compliance risk and unnecessary maintenance cost.
The Solution – Digitise paper logbooks with the new CleverSparky app
The solution proposed was to install the Clevertest Plus (CTP) System as proof of concept in the Middle Park Coles store in Queensland.
CityFM was keen to get one store fully operational so the benefits could be easily demonstrated. Middle Park Coles was identified as the perfect place to showcase the system because 80% of the emergency and exit lighting fittings had already been replaced with Clevertronics LP fittings, which all have self-testing as a standard feature.
In July 2019, Clevertronics removed the remaining legacy fittings and provided, free of charge, the last 20% of new Clevertest Plus LP fittings. They also helped digitise all the paper logbooks into the new CleverSparky app they had tailor-made to manage the data.
The Result – Coles stores progressing toward full CTP installation
Bright says he is thrilled with the results. “We have programmed the system to self-test every six months, as per our compliance obligations and at that point, all the technician has to do is check each fitting to see if the LED is displaying a pass or fail indication. They capture the data electronically as they go using CleverSparky, then upload the data to the cloud for internal or fully compliant external auditing. It’s brilliant,” he says.
Although the exact savings are yet to be calculated, there is no doubt the new CTP system will reduce labour costs, eliminate errors and give uniformity to the data collection process.
In addition, Bright says it helps with forward maintenance. “If the fitting does display a failed test result, meaning there is an error, you can scan the fitting with your phone to automatically identify
the issue, or just view the way the LED flashes to see what is required to fix it.
We then electronically log the maintenance request,” he says.
Clevertronics National Accounts Manager, Graeme Smith, is also happy with how the project has evolved. “It’s win-win-win. For CityFM, for Coles and for Clevertronics. It has been a great learning curve for us, has improved safety and removed the compliance risks. In fact, it has set a new benchmark by going above and beyond the standard,” he notes.
Having successfully demonstrated the concept store, the project is swiftly progressing towards the end goal, which is to have all single-point Coles stores fully installed with CTP fittings and all data migrated onto CleverSparky.
“This will really drive efficiency gains giving us what I call ‘more for less,’” continues Bright.
“It has been great to work with Clevertronics on the project. Our aim has always been to get the best product for the right price with the right support, and all of that combined equals Clevertronics.”
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