Emergency Lighting PS3 Producer Statements: What Electricians Need to Know

Emergency lighting is one of those systems nobody thinks about until the power goes out, at which point it's the only thing standing between a safe evacuation and people feeling their way down a dark stairwell. That's why it's treated differently to most electrical work: it's not a certify-once-and-move-on job, it's an ongoing compliance obligation for the life of the building.

What a PS3 actually is

A producer statement is a formal document where someone suitably qualified confirms that specified work, in this case the installation, testing or ongoing maintenance of an emergency lighting system, was carried out and meets the applicable requirements. A "PS3" specifically covers the construction or installation side. It's the documented evidence a building owner or their compliance assessor can point to and say: this system was installed and is being maintained by someone qualified to say so.

Why it's an ongoing thing, not a one-off certificate

Unlike a standard COC issued once at the end of a job, emergency lighting systems typically sit inside a building's compliance schedule, meaning they need to be checked and tested on a recurring basis for as long as the building is in use. That's because a battery that tested fine at installation can fail two years later, and the whole point of the system is that it has to actually work the one time it's genuinely needed. Ongoing testing is how anyone can be confident it still will.

This mostly comes up for commercial and multi-unit buildings, where an Independently Qualified Person (IQP) role is often part of how the building demonstrates ongoing compliance for its Building Warrant of Fitness. If you're doing emergency lighting testing and maintenance work, there's a good chance you're feeding directly into that process, whether or not you're the one holding the IQP role yourself.

What good documentation actually looks like

Because it's a recurring obligation, the records matter as much as the testing itself. A useful set of records covers each test date, what was checked, what passed and what didn't, and what was done about any failures, in a form that can be handed over quickly whenever a building owner or their compliance assessor asks for it. Vague notes like "tested, all good" don't hold up well if a defect shows up later and someone wants to know exactly what was checked and when.

Where this usually goes wrong

The recurring pattern we've seen (and lived ourselves): test records scattered across paper sheets, spreadsheets and whatever system was in use two providers ago, so that when a building owner needs history for an audit or a BWOF renewal, someone's stuck reconstructing it from memory or digging through old emails. The fix isn't more paperwork, it's paperwork that's actually easy to find again: one place where every PS3 and every test result for a site lives together, tied to the same client, so producing a full history takes minutes instead of an afternoon.

That's exactly what CertMate's Emergency Lighting module does: issue the PS3, log each test result against the same site, and pull up the full history whenever a client or compliance assessor asks for it. Start a free trial to see it in action.