|
Total Electrical Failure - The National Team Steps In It was 5.30am on a Saturday morning when a building near St. Paul's in London lost all of its electricity.  | Fortunately the site was maintained by Integral - and our team rapidly swung into action. We established that the failure had been caused by a burn-out on the electrical relay controlling the ACB switching mechanism. But as the units are very expensive and the failure rate is very low, no spares were available on site. The tenants needed their power supply back on before Monday morning, and the managing agent would be penalised for failing to do so. Therefore the contract manager was called to the scene and Integral's regional director kept informed, with a temporary generator being installed on site with a large enough capacity to run the building if the repair could not be made in time. An oil tanker was also brought in to supply the generator for longer if necessary. Finding a replacement circuit breaker was not simple, as the only manufacturer was based in Glasgow - at which point our Livingston office was brought into the picture. |
Although the manufacturer did not have the unit in stock they agreed to produce a replacement immediately; the time was now 11pm. The new unit was ready for use by 11am on the Sunday, our engineers working through the weekend to connect the standby generator to the building's electrical supply, in case the ACB replacement could not be delivered in time.
By Sunday afternoon the unit was ready to transfer down to London but there was another hurdle to clear; because it was an electrical item, security checks to air freight it to Heathrow would take two days, so it was taken by road instead. The unit arrived in London at 9.30pm on Sunday and was fitted by 3am on Monday morning, then tested and put to work within 30 minutes. A new team of engineers arrived to relieve those that had been on site during the emergency and the temporary generator was disconnected, systems re-set, checked, tested, and left in working order. Staff at the building arrived for work on Monday morning completely unaware what had taken place over the weekend - and what is more, no contract penalties were incurred.
|
Total Electrical Failure
