Infrared inspection is integral to the loss
control evaluation service that Chubb
Insurance provides its commercial
customers. The company employs about 70
certified thermographers worldwide, who it
assigns to check the health of customers’
electrical and mechanical assets to minimise
fire risk and costly downtime and ensure
personnel safety.

Since the UK inception of this service in
1997 Chubb has maintained a database of
every hotspot detected. Against each of these
surveys it attributes a cost of potential
property loss and business interruption
should the defect have been allowed to
develop, The company estimates that
averted losses to date are in excess of £3.5m
and rising.

In the UK, Chubb
maintains it own
arsenal of thermal
imaging cameras and
recently added two
FLIR P-Series top-ofthe-
range infrared models to its inventory.

These were chosen to complement existing
Flir models which, despite being more than
10 years old, still work well.

The cameras allow IR services to be
provided across all industry sectors from
factories, warehouses, and utility sites to
municipal, medical and leisure establishments.

Predominantly the role of the cameras is the
condition monitoring of capital equipment
and associated electrical systems but they are
also increasingly being used to check the
integrity of insulation to contain overheads.

The cameras allow Chubb to spot the
vital signs of a developing fault without the
need to interrupt the production or business
process. Neil MacLeod, risk engineer and
Level 2 certified thermographer, says “As
well as
preventing
catastrophic
failure it also
allows us to
help the
customer
minimise
downtime and use
maintenance
resources more
effectively.”