Derby Homes chooses Aico smoke alarms

Derby Homes, which manages properties for Derby City Council, standardises on Aico EI160 Series mains-powered smoke alarms and Aico Radiolink wireless interconnect EI160 alarms.

The switch to Aico comes after Derby Homes decided to build a better, more fully integrated supply chain in order to save costs, improve efficiency, reduce wastage and achieve environmental goals.

'As everyone in the supply chain is co-operating in partnership, we are seeing significant cost savings, increased efficiency and less wastage,' said Steve Giblenn, senior contracts surveyor for Derby Homes.

'Initially we were concerned that Aico was more expensive, but it was able to convince us that - although its Radiolink wireless interconnect smoke alarms might be more expensive initially - they would save us money overall and increase tenant acceptance.

'We now find we're using smarter, more reliable products that do what we want them to do,' he added.

Derby Homes is also firmly committed to achieving best practice in environmental issues and Aico has helped the company to achieve its goals of reducing waste and increase efficiency.

Aico's Radiolink products are being supplied with less packaging and the boxes are being reused to return old alarms to wholesaler Rexel Senate, which passes them on to Aico for disposal.

Aico's approach to packaging and the environmental gains achieved are helping Derby City Council towards a 25 per cent reduction in carbon emissions within five years.

Aico smoke alarms are being installed as part of a regular replacement programme.

Where existing hard-wired interconnection is already in place, EI160 Series optical alarms are used.

Where there is no hard wiring, installing Radiolink wireless interconnect alarms is standard practice.

Since August 2007, contracting partner Initial Security Systems has installed 1,892 EI160 Series alarms in homes, 709 units in flats and a further 982 Radiolink EI160s in properties where hard-wired interconnection was not already in place.

'With no need for all the disruption and damage caused by installing hard-wired interconnection, tenant uptake on accepting the new alarm systems has been maximised and the installation savings have either offset the extra costs or even meant overall cost savings,' said Peter Knight, partnership manager with Initial.

'We are now attending far fewer call outs for smoke alarm issues, which is both cutting costs and reducing the environmental impact of the visit,' said Giblenn.

'Part of this is because we have now achieved a first time fix rate of 98 per cent.

'We've also cut out double handling and other efficiencies that may have been present before the supply chain was reorganised, and our database is now more organised for future management,' he added.

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