Celebrating its centenary, the IRCCS Sacro Cuore Don Calabria Hospital in Negrar, Verona, has recently upgraded it’s fire detection system for round the clock monitoring and quick detection of fire.
The hospital is made up of eight buildings with more than 30 medical departments, operating theatres, offices, canteens, and conference rooms. In recent years, the hospital has undergone considerable renovation and expansion with the update to the fire detection system expected to provide the best possible protection for the thousands of people who visit the facility every day as well as for the preservation of property, patient data and vital medical equipment.
The hospital’s focus was to minimalise the risk of false alarms to avoid unnecessary and problematic evacuation situations, especially where some patients may find moving around independently difficult and, in some cases, impossible, especially for patients in critical care departments.
Following consultation, 26 fire detection panels, including Syncro and Hochiki’s L@titude system, and two Vision remote panels were installed in the hospital, all of which were networked.
The project brief stated that it was important the systems and any devices used must be installed with minimum impact on the day to day running of the hospital. Hochiki ESP range was recommended as these devices are said to be quick and easy to install, therefore providing minimal disruption.
Loris Fornaser, Technical Manager at the installer company Amperia srl, commented: “As you can imagine the fire safety standards of this project were extremely high due to the complex environment in which a hospital operates. This led us to choose a technologically advanced life safety product that would guarantee the client excellent performance and long-term reliability. The manufacturer’s technical support was always precise and Hochiki proved to be the ideal solution”
Another priority for the project was that any fire detection system needed to be able to alert every person in the building to an emergency, including visually and hearing-impaired visitors. A range of VADs (visual alarm devices) were used to provide a visual indication of an alarm condition to people who would not normally be alerted to a fire by standard audible-only devices such as sounders and bells, according to Hochiki.
The hospital also wanted the ability for the entire system to be continuously monitoring 24 hours a day which has been implemented thanks to the I/O modules and technological fault alarm signals which were connected to the fire control panel loop. These were then monitored by the personnel 24 hours a day with two supervision systems, one for the fire detection system and one for the technological alarms.
This project at the IRCCS Sacro Cuore Don Calabria Hospital was a large and complex project for Hochiki in Italy, involving the installation of multiple detectors, 10 fire extinguishing systems, 14 gas detection panels and 10 aspirating panels.
Davide Montoli, Product Manager at Hochiki Italia, explains: “An interesting aspect of our systems is the “Bridge” communication between different generations of fire alarm control panels. In the case of this Hospital, the possibility of connecting the new L@titude control panels to the existing network of Syncro control panels made it possible to expand the system even though many years had passed since the installation of the original control panel. In fact, Hochiki’s L@titude platform can adapt its communication protocol to ensure backward compatibility with previous generation control panels”
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