In the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire, a number of buildings were identified as having
similar cladding, leading to concerns about fire safety. The Chalcots Estate in Camden was one such development, where recommendations from London Fire Brigade led to the evacuation of the buildings in June 2017 whilst essential fire safety work was carried out. On return to their homes in July, many residents were understandably concerned about fire risks and Camden Council implemented a number of measures to ensure their safety.
Whilst ongoing building works were carried out, the council introduced fire wardens to each of the buildings 24/7 as a precaution, to patrol the common areas, and support the residents. However, it was difficult to verify the completeness of the fire patrols being carried out. Stephen Smith, Head of Security, Camden Council explained: “We employed two companies to provide fire wardens at the Chalcots Estate, but it proved difficult to obtain oversight of their activities 24/7 from remote locations.”
Stephen approached MyTAG to implement their Proof of Presence solution to allow complete verification that the agreed fire patrols were consistently being completed. MyTAG installed HID Trusted® Tags as checkpoints on each floor of the buildings, following agreed routes for the wardens to patrol. Each warden was equipped with a heavy duty Near Field Communication (NFC) enabled phone and during their patrol each tag is activated with their phone. This simple tap of a tag is all that is needed to prove presence at a given checkpoint, and so very little training or installation time was needed. The Trusted® Tags cannot be copied or cloned, and the GPS part of the MyTAG solution provides absolute proof of the warden’s presence at a specific location at a specific time.
All the information from the patrols is available immediately, 24/7 from wherever it is required from the cloud based MyTAG system, and daily summaries are produced for management overview. This allows the fire patrols to be reviewed remotely and supports the security companies in demonstrating that they are meeting their SLAs.
Stephen commented: “We are delighted with the MyTAG system which has allowed us to gain complete oversight of the fire patrols and to demonstrate how this measure is helping to keep the Chalcots Estate tenants safe 24 hours a day. MyTAG is quick and simple to use and operate and allows us to monitor and audit the patrols remotely and demonstrate compliance with the specifications that we have agreed.”