Notifier Université Laval Receives High Marks in Fire Protection

Universit Laval Receives High Marks in Fire Protection Offers Campus Wide System Control and Preparation for Future Emergency Communications Systems in 1852 in the City of Quebec Canada Universit Laval was the rst French speaking University in North America In 1950 construction began its main campus in Sainte Foy which was then on the outskirts of the city has grown into what is now referred to as a city within a city university statistics are impressive the 300 acre campus has over 32 which are linked by 10 kilometers of underground pedestrian and tunnels designed to cope with harsh Canadian winters The Universit hosts a sizeable community of approximately 44,000 students and 8,000 within an urban rural setting of dense woods grasslands and sports elds covering more than half the campus ed Solution few years ago the University Board of Governors decided to allocate funds a new state of the art code compliant re protection network spanning 32 buildings campus wide The old re alarm systems were an aging of different makes and models Moving forward the Univer sought bids for a standardized system from a single supplier for a true re alarm solution The ONYX Series addressable re protection manufactured by NOTIFIER by Honeywell won the bid which involved every alarm panel detector and supervisory device from the insurance industry and I never seen a system quite as big this It has 35 panels and more than 20,000 supervisory and detection says Pierre Paquin Fire Prevention Coordinator for Universit Laval old systems presented a series of faults on a regular basis that could have in serious problems Moreover the mixture of equipment throughout campus made it dif cult for the university security personnel to deal with of the individual systems time someone new joined the staff they had be trained in how to use all of the different panels That one of the main we decided to standardize says Paquin Management building is protected by its own stand alone re alarm control panel each as a node on the network The campus network of 35 panels is a of NOTIFIER AM 2020 and ONYX Series NFS 3030 panels con via 42 kilometers 26 miles of multi mode ber optic cable run conduit installed throughout the school network of tunnels have a building about 50 miles away in the Laurentians in the woods Paquin building is also part of our network and is linked in by IT a commercial phone line node on the system acts as a repeater to reshape and regenerate data Therefore any damage incurred by one or more nodes due to re etc will not effect operations and communication among the nodes added redundancy the university installed Style 7 DCLC circuits in which cable carrying all incoming and outgoing signals are looped through the in separate conduits According to Paquin this type of integration helps ensure a single line break does not interrupt the transmission of alarm University new re alarm performs as one solitary system supported by a high speed 312,500 BPS data communications network allows each control panel to maintain its own area of protection providing monitoring and control capabilities for all other network nodes NCSs Network Control Stations one at the school main 911 command and another at an emergency back up location provide immediate and control of the entire re alarm network The NCS is a rack computer customized with detailed full color graphics of the campus down to individual building oor plans A S E S T U D Y an event the NCS automatically zeroes in on the area displaying alarm while the cursor changes to indicate any on screen alarm activity an operating environment similar to Windows authorized personnel easily navigate through the screens using simple mouse clicks NCS houses an unlimited history of system information including operator events and response data all stamped with time and date A hard copy each event is also generated by a network printer of system maintenance is another NCS highlight of the uses of the is that it allows us to individually deactivate any detectors or supervisory for renovation or testing We can even deactivate the alarms in an building when we perform required testing on re pumps or sprinkler says Paquin a back up to the NCS a remote annunciator is also connected to the The Network Control Annunciator features an LCD display and opera keypad offering the University security and facilities staff an alternative of monitoring and control functions for the entire network Standards building codes and standards set by the ULC Underwriters Laboratories Canada dictated the majority of the University re alarm design Acting its own AHJ Authority Having Jurisdiction the Universit Laval decided exceed these requirements in certain areas example many of the classrooms have now been wired for students to laptops which raised concern that this would increase the probability electrical res Although code only requires rate of rise heat detectors in the University decided to install the more expensive combina heat and smoke detectors to provide more thorough detection and faster detectors are not required in most locations protected by sprinklers University decided to install detectors anyway considering the detectors respond more quickly than the sprinklers These added precautions not increased the level of protection but also enabled the school to receive favorable terms from its insurance carrier and Tune Up indicates the insurance industry typically pays more attention to sprin and not detectors because they are usually poorly maintained To assist the regular maintenance and testing of detectors the school ONYX Series detectors and supervisory devices are simple plug in appliances with dials for easy addressability no software interventions are necessary University emphasizes that all smoke detectors are tested annually using prescribed methods for this process Evolution Universit Laval soon plans to migrate from the NCS to NOTIFIER latest workstation ONYXWorks This state of the art desktop system provide the school security and facilities personnel with a single point control for the entire re alarm network as well as security access control video systems ONYXWorks can also support live voice paging for mass cation key reason for this upgrade upgrade its re alarm network to also serve as an emergency communica system the University will add DVC Digital Voice Command to each control panel The DVC can deliver prerecorded event driven as well as live voice paging by microphone to speci c areas the entire campus University is part of the International Association of Campus Law Enforce Administrators IACLEA our crime rate in Quebec City is nil we know something could happen There could be dangerous hazardous waste spills and campus wide lockdowns We also to consider that we have students and faculty from over 90 different around the world An emergency communications system would a vital contribution to our life safety Paquin declares the Universit Laval understands the signi cance of a standardized re alarm system that is easy to monitor and maintain However the ultimate is the fast response and advanced protection provided to all whom the halls of this historic school Clintonville Road CT 06472 1610 USA 203 484 7161 203 484 7118 er com 2010 Honeywell International Inc