Phoenix Children’s Hospital Upgrades Fire Safety Technology
- By David George
- Feb 01, 2011
Founded 26 years ago, Phoenix Children’s Hospital is one of the
10 largest children’s hospitals in the nation. The hospital currently
covers more than 40 pediatric specialties and provides health care to
some of the sickest children in Arizona.
In order to meet the requirements of a rapidly expanding metro
Phoenix population base, the hospital began a $588 million
expansion and renovation of its facilities in 2008 with a new
685,000 square foot, 11-story patient tower and an 18-unit
Ronald McDonald House -- making it the largest free-standing
children’s hospital in the nation.
Providing a fire protection system for such a large project will be
a complicated and difficult task. The project requires installing
the latest, most-advanced fire protection
technology available for the renovated and
new structures, such as the patient tower,
and integrating this new technology with the
hospital’s legacy systems in order to create a
single, cohesive system.
Appropriately, the process for choosing the fire
system contractor was very demanding.
As Tim Snow, general manager of Detection Logic
Arizona, put it, “To win this job, the contractor
would have to provide the right credentials, the
right product offering, and the ability to support
the system in the future.”
The first stage of the process began in March 2008 with the
fire alarm Request for Qualifications (RFQ) sent out to several
vendors representing each of the three fire system manufacturers
approved for the project.
Even for Detection Logic, which
has extensive experience in installing fire systems for large
applications, winning the project came down to several other
factors -- most significantly its system design proposal. The
winning submittal had to demonstrate that the design and
product selection could best meet all the challenging technology
and performance requirements of Phoenix Children’s Hospital
while keeping system, installation, and ongoing operational
costs down.
For example, the existing fire system for Phoenix
Children’s Hospital is based on Edwards Systems Technology
(EST) products. To integrate the legacy EST and new NOTIFIER
systems, Detection Logic proposed connecting each panel
through an Echelon fiber optic network to an ONYXWorks
workstation from NOTIFIER in a UL-864-listed configuration.
“The ONYXWorks Monitoring and Integration System is the only
system available capable of integrating all of Phoenix Children’s
Hospital legacy and proposed systems,” said Fred Lovato,
engineering manager at Detection Logic.
For Phoenix Children’s
Hospital, these systems could include fire alarm systems,
security systems, card access systems, CCTV systems, central
station receivers for outlying buildings with no connectivity, and
any systems with dry contacts that must be monitored.
Along with the Echelon backbone with ONYXWorks, the proposal
included NOTIFIER network panels and detection and notification
devices from System Sensor, including intelligent photoelectric
smoke detectors, SpectrAlert Advance chimes and strobes, and
speakers and speaker strobes for voice evacuation.
“With their
ability to communicate clear, intelligible messages, SpectrAlert
Advance speakers and speaker strobes are our device of choice
for voice evacuation systems designed to protect patients and
children,” Lovato said.
They were also selected for their ability
to be quickly and easily installed and maintained. The design
called for more than 1,200 speaker strobes. As the
only plug-in devices, the SpectrAlert Advance
products not only speed and simplify installation
across large projects, but also reduce labor and
material costs associated with ground faults
caused by pinched or crushed wires.
In addition to the system design proposal,
Detection Logic provided Phoenix Children’s
Hospital with information on how they would
support the system. Consequently, Detection
Logic proposed a range of approaches to
enable the hospital to operate and maintain the
system effectively, including providing constant training
throughout the installation of the system, labeling devices based
on Phoenix Children’s Hospital input, and designing a user-friendly
system interface.
About the Author
David George is the director of marketing at System Sensor.