Case Study: Emergency Audio System, London

The Sancroft Building, situated in the hub of the City of London, is a 429,000 sq. ft office complex across 9 floors plus a basement level.

Smiths Technical Systems were approached to design and install the fire alarm at the site which was required to link to a public address and voice alarm system for general and emergency announcements. Paul Farrer, Project Manager at Smiths Technical Systems, speaks about the installation and how TOA helped with providing a practical and cost-effective solution from the design to the commissioning of the project on completion.

As Paul explains “We needed a solution that could give the best overall safety, whilst being operationally robust. The TOA VX-3308WM wall mount solution seemed the ideal choice.

The design allows for it to be controlled from the Fire Control Centre Room on the ground floor whilst providing linked public address and voice alarm over the 10 floors with a wall mount system installed on each floor. This was connected with interleaved fire rated copper network Cat5 cabling. Designing the system in this way had several advantages both financially and technically.

Distance was key in this project. Installing a system on each floor rather than centralised greatly reduced the length of cabling required enabling the use of the copper network Cat5 rather than a fibre network. This saved time and was more labour efficient making it cost effective.

As the project was over many floors having interlinked wall mount systems saved time on commissioning and fault finding as engineers could carry out works by individual floor rather than relocating to a centralised system each time.”

The VX-3308WM is a complete PA/VA system in one unit. Due to its compact design, it is the ideal solution for small spaces. It is time efficient as all the components are pre-assembled and connected including the two 300 Watt amplifiers and power supply. In addition to the standard configuration TOA added a stand by amplifier for enhanced back-up to each system. They were partnered by the matching VX-3065BB battery box to provide battery storage which when connected to the VX-3308WM gives back-up power in the event of a mains supply failure. The system adheres to the V4 category of BS-5839-8: 2013, full manual control, and uses EN54 independently certified products as required for voice alarm.

The ground floor is the hub of the system where the Fire Central Control Room is located. As well as having the same wall-mount system as the other floors it also houses the RM-200SF Fire Microphone, along with two RM-320F extension units allowing for an additional 40 function buttons. The RM-200SF is equipped with an emergency key allowing it to be used as a remote microphone for emergency broadcast. In addition, zone selection and microphone announcements can be made at the time of emergency broadcast giving greater flexibility in how messages are delivered.

As Paul explains “We needed a solution to the multi-floor configuration for the layout of the building that would allow us to meet the client’s high specification within their budget. The VX-3308WM system gave us the most flexible options in operation, timescale and cost effectiveness. Knowing the reputation of the robustness and longevity of TOA products we are confident that this installation will provide effective public address and voice alarm for many years to come supported by the excellent TOA technical team.”