The University of Oxford has taken steps to ensure that across their city-wide site, life safety is prioritized. With clear visibility of the alarm status of all buildings, response times are faster and false alarms have been greatly reduced.
Alarm monitoring solution
The alarm systems at Oxford are built up of a multitude of legacy and new equipment spanning a 30 year period. The buildings are also situated across the whole city.
With the old fiber ring being disconnected it was important for Drax to provide a cost-effective way to monitor all of the University’s alarms and report them to the central Security control room on a PC system, giving clear and concise messages about an event such as the alarm location, date, time and what action is required.
With so many separate buildings, often renovations or other construction works would be underway, and so the University needed a way to isolate individual devices from the network to ensure that an unnecessary and costly evacuation did not occur as a result of a false alarm.
SMaRT Watch unit
The solution was for the University to upgrade their existing Drax hardware to the newer SMaRT Watch unit. The SMaRT Watch unit connects locally to the different alarm systems and then sends all event data using the existing IT infrastructure.
The SMaRT Watch unit connects locally to the different alarm systems and then sends data using the existing IT
This meant all of the University’s existing cabling could be used and will be constantly maintained and updated by the partner and incumbent fire alarm contractors Pyrotec Services Ltd, to meet the ever-growing demand. To reduce false fire alarms that may often occur in construction areas where a hot works permit is required, the University was able to permit users to can control the alarm systems remotely.
The benefit of this is that the analog values of the individual devices can be monitored for the likelihood that they will activate if they are affected by things such as dust or debris from power tools, after being disabled.
Helps improve the safety of staff & students
By using the software, the University was able to gain additional reporting information from their addressable fire alarm panels and can pinpoint the exact location of an alarm within the building, saving valuable time and improving the safety of their staff and students.
The University now has a solution that can easily be scaled and which has given them greater visibility and control of their buildings alarm systems, as well as promoting choice of suppliers and value for money as their site grows.
