IR inspection key to loss control

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."