The Importance of Keeping Alarms Up to Date
High-rise fire alarm upgrade improves tenant safety and aids building management
- By Brian Carlson
- Jun 01, 2015
During the 1960s, Arlington, Va. and the entire Washington, D.C.
area experienced tremendous growth as demand for office space
soared and new residents flocked to the region for employment.
County planners and engineers saw an opportunity to manage
this growth in a way that would reimagine their communities, reduce
dependence on cars, and revitalize struggling retail and business areas. Ultimately,
the county planners connected already-thriving residential neighborhoods
to public transportation, jobs, schools, parks, shops and services. This is where
Ballston Station in Arlington comes into play.
Constructed in 1990 in the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor, this eight-story building
has more than 275,000 square feet of commercial office space. Ballston Station has
fit perfectly into Arlington County’s mix of office, multi-family residential and retail,
providing a 24-hour live, work and play environment that numerous businesses
have used to successfully recruit employees. The high-rise’s first floor includes
retail tenants such as Uncle Julio’s Rio Grande Cafe, Willow Restaurant and Ascot
Diamonds. The remaining seven floors house a variety of commercial tenants,
including Deloitte, Lockheed Martin and the Association for the Advancement of
Medical Instrumentation.
In 2014, building engineers had to address Ballston Station’s antiquated fire
alarm system. Installed when the building was built nearly 25 years ago, the old,
non-addressable fire alarm and voice communications system was starting to fail.
Acquiring proper support and service for the proprietary system had become a
challenge, causing the property management company and building owner to
seek out a replacement.
“There were far too many problems with the old system going into trouble
and false alarm conditions,” said Al Gray of Cushman Wakefield, the property
management firm of Ballston Station. “For instance, the circuit board cards would
easily work themselves loose and cause unnecessary alarms and subsequent problems.”
What’s more, the new system had to comply with the Americans with Disabilities
Act (ADA) by adding more notification appliance circuit (NAC) coverage to
certain areas to include more strobes and speakers. The NAC upgrade applied to
the main lobby, garage, penthouse and elevator machine rooms as well as hallways
and other core areas.
The building’s graphic annunciator
panel needed updating as a result of
the new Arlington County mandates.
Formally numbered as “1, 2, 3, etc.,”
new requirements prescribed that these
stairwell emergency exits must be referenced
using letters “A, B, C, etc.” so
as not to be confused with the elevator
numbering sequence.
The property manager wanted a less
proprietary solution, along with the
ease-of-use and comprehensive event
information of an advanced addressable
system. Rolf Jensen & Associates
was hired as the fire protection consultant
on the project and the building’s
long-time electrical contractor recommended
local life safety integrator
Alarm Tech Solutions to offer an affordable,
effective solution.
Alarm Tech Solutions provided a
thorough proposal, complete with a demonstration
of the proposed Gamewell-
FCI E3 Series fire alarm and emergency
communication system. Building engineers
liked the E3 Series’ features, particularly
the intuitive nature of its touchscreen
Network Graphic Annunciator
(NGA). First responders and building
engineers are able to quickly access and
interpret data from the NGA—its display
walks the user through every step of
the process when responding to an alarm,
supervisory or system trouble event.
“The recommendation from the
electrical contractor combined with a
comprehensive proposal and system
demonstration gave the owner and
property management team confidence
this solution offered the best value,”
said Marty Smith, president and CEO
of Alarm Tech Solutions.
The addressability of the new system
would give building engineers the
ability to disable and enable various
points during construction or remodeling
projects, instead of taking the whole
system offline, as was the case with the
old conventional system. Although
only communicating fire alarm alerts at
this time, the new system’s emergency
communications capabilities can be
easily expanded to include voice alerts
for other threats such as severe weather
and acts of violence.
Since Ballston Station was fully occupied
during the system replacement,
an interface between the two systems
had to be established so that activation
of an initiating device on either the existing
system or the new system would
properly activate notification appliances
(speakers and strobes); building
systems functions (elevator recall, stair
pressurization and other fan controls);
and the annunciator.
Alarm Tech Solutions and the electrical
contractor examined the existing
initiating device circuit wiring and determined
it could be used for the signaling
line circuit (SLC) to serve the new
addressable devices—a big saver of
time, money and labor.
The existing system did have lowvoltage,
fire alarm, power-limiting
wire mixed with 120VAC power wire
in the same raceway. To support the
new system, riser conduits were installed
for new SLC wiring for the
vertical riser which connected to existing
single conductor, non-twisted and
non-shielded wire on each floor for the
addressable devices.
Both new and old systems were interfaced
to ensure activation of an alarm
on either system during the transition
phase would perform the required fire
safety functions. Each floor was changed over one-at-a-time and pretested prior
to moving on to the next floor.
The changeover was successful, with
positive results from the fire marshal’s
acceptance testing and the Arlington
County annual inspection. This eliminated
a lot of nervous tension for the
building engineer—stress that had taken
place each year with the old system.
Much of the success can be attributed
to superior project management,
particularly when the original electrical
contractor went out of business more
than halfway through the job. Cushman
Wakefield worked diligently to execute
a contract with another electrical contractor,
Power Services, to complete the
project. Alarm Tech Solutions, Power
Services and Cushman Wakefield collaborated
closely to minimize the impact
of the change in contractors and
completed the project very smoothly.
The new addressable system offers
much more detailed information on
each alarm event, leading to a faster,
more effective response by building engineers
and first responders. A NGA
in the engineer’s office enables immediate
identification of any issues without
rushing to the first floor fire control
room to investigate.
“A primary benefit is the ability
to disable and enable specific areas instead
of entire circuits, or even floors,
at a time,” Gray said. “It’s easy to read
the history and data stored, and if we
have any problems, need any parts or
programming, we don’t have to rely on
one sole proprietary service provider.”
In addition, automated supervisory
or maintenance alerts inform building
engineers when a device or other component
needs maintenance. This greatly
minimizes nuisance alarms and tenant
disruptions.
“Building engineers are delighted
with the substantial increase in the system’s
reliability as well as the intuitive
nature of the system,” said Smith.
From an antiquated and failing fire
protection system to a state-of-the-art
fire alarm and voice evacuation system,
Ballston Station has established a higher
level of safety for its tenants—and
added another competitive advantage
to market to prospective
tenants.
This article originally appeared in the June 2015 issue of Security Today.