Composite Panels
A groundbreaking new approach to fire safety is saving businesses thousands of pounds in unnecessary insurance premiums.
In recent years, insurers have incurred significant losses from large fires in which composite panels have been a feature. The panels - made using a 'sandwich' of thin steel and a variety of insulation materials have been widely used for years in the food industry to make insulated chambers for storage and in food preparation and cooking areas. They are popular with food companies and commercial landlords because they form a relatively cheap and easy to clean wall surface.
However, they are much less popular with insurers and fire fighters. That's because from the outside all composite panels, except those made most recently look identical - no matter how combustible or inert the filling in the sandwich may be. The lack of conformity has been causing major safety and cost problems for the owners or tenants of buildings. Because it was usual for small firms to manufacture the panels, each with their own preferred material composition there was no way of knowing just how flammable the middle of the panel was.
Fire fighters are understandably unwilling to enter a burning building if the owner or tenant can not guarantee the nature of the materials inside. Instead, once they are sure there are no lives at stake, they will fight the fire from a safe distance, which usually results in a much greater level of damage to the building and its contents.
The response of insurance companies has been predictable and equally understandable. Policyholders have been required to verify the contents of each of the panels used in a structure. If the occupant cannot guarantee that eh contents of each panel are fire-retardant, the insurance company will typically raise its premium by a huge factor for both contents and buildings insurance. We have seen annual premium quotes vary between £10,000 and £70,000 for a factory unit - depending on whether the panels are safe or not.
The occupant of a building will usually have no idea where the panels came from or who made them. Equally they have no idea whether the panels used throughout a building are all made from the same material.
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The only way to discover a panel's make-up, until now, has been to break into it and examine the contents - thus rendering it useless in a food preparation area.
Now, a groundbreaking technique has been developed which allows us to ascertain the contents of a panel - from the outside. The method has been developed by world-leading non-destructive testing specialists GBG of Cambridge, with whom the Rolton group has works closely. The technique, is protected by patents, uses two procedures - thermal imaging and vibration dissipation - to develop two 'snapshots' of the properties of the materials inside the panel. Although some mixtures give similar readings for one test, the combined results of the two tests give an accurate result when compared against the readings obtained from other panels of known composition.
The approach enables panels to identified and requires that only the unsafe ones be removed. The process is clean, quick and, above all, accurate. Once any unsafe panels have been identified, we work with clients to help them manage the process of panel replacement and risk management.
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