 |
| The Advanced Lifeline panel combines a hearing impaired alert system & ESPA-compatible fire engineer paging |
A leading UK girls’ school has selected multiprotocol fire panels linked to a high performance radio paging system from Advanced, to ensure the safety of pupils and DDA/Equality Act compliance.
St Catherine’s School, Bramley, near Guildford, Surrey, comprises preparatory and senior (with boarding) schools for girls aged 4 and above. In a recent upgrade to its fire system on the senior site, it specified Advanced’s MxPro 5 fire panels and Lifeline radio paging system. MxPro 5 offers high performance fire detection and alarm control across the large site and is linked to the Lifeline panels which provide wireless radio coverage across every building on the school’s large site.
The Advanced Lifeline panel combines a hearing impaired alert system, ESPA-compatible fire engineer paging, and a staff paging solution into a single, easily installed and attractive panel, making it the ideal solution for a school such as St Catherine’s. The system, installed by Southern Fire Alarms Ltd (SFA), ensures that hearing impaired staff, pupils and visitors are aware of fire alarms via personal radio pagers awakening them if asleep with bedside units and vibrating pillow pads.
MxPro 5 panels can be used in single loop, single panel format or easily configured into high speed, 200 panel networks covering huge areas. Advanced’s legendary ease of installation and configuration and wide peripheral range make it customisable to almost any application and it is found in challenging and prestigious sites around the world including western Europe’s tallest building, The Shard. The MxPro 5 panels installed at St Catherine’s are among Advanced’s best performing fire systems and one of the few available approved to EN54 2,4 & 13.
Oliver Reynolds, Project Manager for Southern Fire Alarms Ltd, commented: “This was a complex project that involved the replacement of the fire systems utilising the existing infrastructure and the integration of Lifeline. The challenge was to offer the wireless alert system over five different buildings and we knew that an integrated Advanced system was the best solution.”
In total, more than 800 individual components were installed in the new system, which is built around two networked, four-loop, MxPro 5 panels. The installation covers the main school building and five other buildings on the site with Lifeline wireless coverage available throughout.
Amanda Hope, UK Business Development Manager said: “Our MxPro 5 panels lead the multiprotocol market and offer the performance, reliability and flexibility needed by a site such as this. The Lifeline system really stands out, offering a complete DDA solution with no fees or annual contracts.”
To ensure total coverage and minimal power usage, even across complicated sites, Lifeline features a variable 2W UHF transmitter. It is very simple to install, either via a relay or ESPA card connection to the fire system. For staff messaging it requires only a power feed.
Carol Carloss, Assistant Businesss Manager for Buildings and Resources at St Catherine’s School, commented: “This is quite a complex site, with many older buildings where radio signals don’t tend to carry, so we have been very pleased with the performance of the Advanced system specified by Southern Fire Alarms Ltd. We were also impressed by the ability to update and extend the fire systems in future without the need for a full replacement.”
MxPro is Advanced’s flagship range of multiprotocol panels, offering customers a choice of two panel ranges, four detector protocols and a completely open installer network that enjoys free training and support.
