Emergency and exit lighting: AS/NZS 2293 explained

Exit signs and emergency lighting are the green-running-man signs above your doors and the small fittings that flick on when the power drops. They are not decorative. In a Class 5 to Class 9 commercial building they are mandated by the National Construction Code, designed and installed under AS/NZS 2293.1, maintained on a six-monthly cycle under AS/NZS 2293.2, and built from products certified to AS/NZS 2293.3.

If you manage a commercial building in Victoria, the question is rarely "do we need them" (you do) and almost always "is the logbook current, and would it survive an inspection". This article walks through what AS/NZS 2293 requires, what fails, and what the consequences are when it lapses.

What the standard actually covers

AS/NZS 2293 is published in three parts, and each part is a separate document with a separate audience. Treating it as one monolithic standard is the most common source of confusion.

Part	Title	Who it's for	What it governs
AS/NZS 2293.1	Design and installation	Designers, electrical contractors, building certifiers	Where exit signs and emergency luminaires must be located, the lux levels they must achieve, escape-route coverage, the 90-minute battery duration rule, sub-circuit and switching requirements
AS/NZS 2293.2	Inspection and maintenance	Building owners, facilities managers, maintenance contractors	The six-monthly maintained-discharge test, annual full inspection, logbook requirements, fault rectification, retention of records
AS/NZS 2293.3	Luminaires and signs (product)	Manufacturers, importers, specifiers	Construction, photometric performance, marking, and certification of the actual fittings — what makes a fitting compliant in the first place

The two parts you'll touch as a building owner or facilities manager are 2293.1 (when something is installed or altered) and 2293.2 (every six months, forever). Part 3 sits in the background — it's how you know the fittings on your wall are fit for purpose.

Where the standard applies

AS/NZS 2293 applies wherever the National Construction Code Volume 1 Part E4 says it does. In practical terms, that's almost every non-residential building you've ever walked into:

• Class 5: offices
• Class 6: retail, shops, cafes, restaurants
• Class 7: storage, carparks, wholesale
• Class 8: factories, laboratories, workshops
• Class 9: public buildings: hospitals, schools, aged care, places of assembly

It also applies to common areas of Class 2 apartment buildings — the corridors, stairwells, lobbies, basement carparks, and plant rooms shared by residents. The flats themselves (Class 2 sole-occupancy units) are exempt, and Class 1 standalone houses are exempt entirely. This is the trap for owners corporation chairs: the apartment owners often assume "residential is exempt", but the OC is responsible for a fully fledged 2293 system in everything outside the front doors of the units.

If you've ever wondered why a four-storey walk-up building has a logbook tucked in the meter cupboard, that's why.

Exit signs vs emergency luminaires

The two pieces of equipment do related but different jobs. The standard treats them differently and the inspection regime is the same for both.

Exit signs are the illuminated green-on-white pictographs (the running figure) marking exits and the path to them. They are continuously illuminated whenever the building is occupied. Modern fittings are LED with internal batteries; older fluorescent versions are still around but failing in increasing numbers as ballasts age out.

Emergency luminaires are the dimmer, often less obvious fittings spaced along corridors, stairwells, and over plant. They sit dormant on mains power and switch on automatically when the local sub-circuit loses supply. Their job is to give you enough light to find the exit safely — typically a minimum of 0.2 lux at floor level along the escape route under AS/NZS 2293.1.

Both run from internal sealed batteries, and both must hold up for at least 90 minutes of operation after the mains drops out. The 90-minute rule is the single most-cited number in the standard and the one your six-monthly test is designed to prove.

The 90-minute rule, in plain terms

When mains power fails, the battery in each fitting must run the lamp at full rated output for 90 minutes without dropping below the minimum lux requirement. Ninety minutes is set as the design margin between "the power went out" and "everyone is safely out of the building" — long enough for a full evacuation of a multi-storey site, with a margin for delays.

A fitting that fails to hold for 90 minutes is non-compliant, regardless of how new it looks or how well it lights up on day one. Battery degradation is the primary failure mode and the reason the testing is built around discharge, not visual inspection.

The six-monthly test

This is where AS/NZS 2293.2 lives. Every fitting in the system must be discharge-tested every six months — meaning the mains supply to the fitting is interrupted, the battery takes over, and the fitting is left running until it either reaches the 90-minute mark or fails before it.

A typical inspection cadence for a commercial building looks like this:

• Every 6 months — full discharge test. Every exit sign and every emergency luminaire is run on battery for the full 90 minutes. Failures are recorded, faults are tagged, replacement batteries or fittings are scheduled.
• Every 6 months — visual inspection. Coverage of escape routes, signage cleanliness, obstructions, blocked or covered fittings, lamp failures, indicator-LED faults, evidence of vandalism or relocation.
• Every 12 months — full system inspection. A more thorough check including circuit-by-circuit verification, control gear inspection, switchboard isolation labelling, and a review of the logbook itself for completeness.
• On change of use or fit-out. The system is re-assessed against AS/NZS 2293.1 because the escape routes have moved.
• After any electrical work that affects emergency circuits. Verification that the fitting count and coverage is still right.

In practice, most buildings run a single combined six-monthly visit by an electrical maintenance contractor, with the annual review folded into one of the two visits each year. The work is logged on the day, signed by the testing technician, and the logbook stays on site.

Modern buildings increasingly use self-testing fittings that run their own discharge cycle automatically and report status via an indicator LED or a central panel. These reduce labour but do not replace the six-monthly compliance visit — the logbook still needs human sign-off, and the technician still verifies that the auto-test results are real.

The logbook

AS/NZS 2293.2 requires a written record. The "logbook" — sometimes a hardcover ledger in the meter cupboard, sometimes a PDF file emailed after each visit, sometimes a software platform — must capture, for each inspection:

• The date of inspection
• The fittings tested and the result for each (pass / fail / fault description)
• Faults identified and the remediation action
• The name and licence of the person who did the work
• The signature confirming the work was done

The logbook stays with the building, not with the contractor. When the building changes ownership it goes with the title. When a building certifier or fire-safety auditor turns up, the logbook is the first document they ask for. A missing logbook is treated, in practice, as evidence the system has not been maintained — even if every fitting is in perfect condition.

In Victoria, the logbook also feeds the building's Annual Essential Safety Measures Report (AESMR) under the Building Regulations 2018 — the report the building owner signs every year confirming all essential safety measures (including emergency lighting) are being maintained to the original standard. No logbook entries means no AESMR sign-off.

What fails an inspection

The common failure modes, in rough order of frequency:

1. Battery fails to hold 90 minutes. Sealed batteries degrade in service; most last 3 to 5 years. The fitting may light up fine on the day and still drop out at 40 minutes. Discharge testing is the only way to catch it.
2. Fitting won't switch on at all. Failed driver, failed lamp, disconnected battery. Common in older fluorescent fittings near end of life.
3. Indicator LED reporting a fault. Self-test fittings telegraph their problems via the green/red LED on the body. A red or flashing indicator is a fail.
4. Coverage gaps. Escape route layout has changed (a partition added during a fit-out, a new doorway, a relocated stairwell) and the existing fittings no longer cover the path. The system was designed for a building layout that no longer exists.
5. Blocked or obscured fittings. Storage stacked under a luminaire, a poster taped over an exit sign, a suspended ceiling tile shading the lamp.
6. Logbook lapse. Last entry more than six months ago. The fittings may all be working, but the system is non-compliant in administrative terms.
7. Wrong fitting class. Replacement fittings installed by a non-specialist contractor that don't carry AS/NZS 2293.3 certification — sometimes a generic LED downlight has been substituted into an emergency-lighting position.

What it costs you when it lapses

Three real consequences, in increasing severity:

Insurance. Most commercial property and public-liability policies require the building's essential safety measures to be maintained to the original standard. A claim arising from an evacuation incident — a slip, fall, or worse, in a darkened corridor — is investigated against the maintenance record. A logbook with a six-month gap is grounds for the insurer to challenge cover. We see this most often after a tenant injury claim or a fire where the post-incident inspection turns up uncertified fittings.

OH&S. Under the Victorian Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004, the building owner and the employer in the building both have duties to provide a safe workplace. A documented failure to maintain emergency egress lighting is the kind of thing WorkSafe investigates after an incident. The penalty is not just regulatory — it's reputational, and in serious cases personal.

Building certifier sign-off. In Victoria, an Annual Essential Safety Measures Report has to be lodged each year. The building surveyor / certifier won't sign off without the logbook. No sign-off means the building's occupancy permit is technically compromised, which becomes acute when a tenant tries to renew a lease, when the building is being sold, or when a major fit-out triggers a re-certification.

In practice the consequences cascade. The logbook lapse is found at AESMR time; the AESMR doesn't get signed; the next prospective tenant's solicitor flags it during due diligence; the lease is delayed; the owners corporation gets a special-resolution remediation bill. None of this involves a fire, an injury, or a regulator.

The residential trap for owners corporations

One last thing worth flagging because it catches OC chairs every year.

Standalone houses (Class 1) are exempt from AS/NZS 2293 — emergency lighting is not required at home. People generalise this to "apartments are residential, so they're exempt", and that's wrong. The common areas of an apartment block — corridors, foyers, stairwells, lift lobbies, shared laundries, basement carparks, plant rooms, bin rooms — are classified as Class 2 under the NCC and require a full AS/NZS 2293 system: design, installation, six-monthly testing, logbook, the lot.

Most OCs inherit the system when the building is handed over by the developer. Fewer than half of them inherit a current logbook. The first six-monthly visit after handover almost always turns up multiple issues, because the developer's electrician finished off "to handover spec" rather than commissioning a fresh maintenance regime.

If you've taken on an OC chair role and you're not sure whether emergency lighting is being maintained — ask the building manager for the most recent 2293.2 logbook entry. If the answer is unclear, the answer is no.

How we handle it

At Millar Electrics we run combined six-monthly emergency lighting visits across our maintenance contracts — discharge test, visual inspection, logbook entry, fault rectification on the day where parts are on the van, scheduled return for anything that needs ordering. For fit-outs and refurbishments under commercial fit-outs we re-design the emergency lighting against AS/NZS 2293.1 whenever the layout changes, and re-commission the system before handover.

If you're a building owner, facilities manager, or OC chair and you can't immediately put your hands on the current logbook — that's the time to get in touch. We'll come and do a baseline inspection, document the current state, and bring the system back into compliance before the next AESMR cycle catches it for you.