Safety Critical Standby Systems
Introduction
Life safety systems in high-risk buildings play a crucial role in protecting occupants from various hazards such as loss of services, fire, and gas leak; allowing the continuity of safety supplies and safe egress in the event of an emergency.
Examples of such systems include:
- Fire alarms - smoke and heat detectors
- Gas detection
- Emergency lighting
- Automatic Transfer Switches (ATS)
- Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS)
- Redundant Networking
- Standby Generation
Redundant Networking
Redundant networking of power management systems provides redundancy in the event of a hardware failure or loss of cabling in areas of buildings.
This builds in resilience allowing safety critical systems to remain live in the event of a failure and emergency.
Automatic Transfer Switches
Automatic Transfer Switches (ATS) are used to transfer between sources in the event of loss of the primary source of power, typically caused be power outages or other electrical faults.
The use of ATS in life safety systems is essential to ensure power is not lost to critical systems such as evacuation lifts, smoke extraction, and early warning systems in the event of an emergency.
Uninterruptible Power Supplies
Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS) provide redundancy to power systems allowing power to critical systems to be retained for a period of time in the event of a power outage or failure.
Standby Generation
Standby generation provides redundancy in the event of a power outage. In the event of a power failure an ATS senses the loss of voltage and commands standby generation to kick in providing backup power within seconds of power loss.
Fire Alarms, Smoke and Heat Detection
The most familiar of safety systems, in the event of a fire, fire alarms, smoke and heat detectors provide early warning allowing for the safe evacuation of personnel. When coupled with emergency lighting and well thought out escape routes, fire alarm systems provide early detection and warning to ensure occupants can escape from large and complex buildings quickly and safely, avoiding undue panic and confusion.
Conclusion
Safety critical standby systems are essential to ensure the safety of your personnel in the event of an emergency. Achieving continuity of services, and availability of lifesaving equipment, can be the difference between life and death in many circumstances, and having well designed, tried, and tested solutions is fundamental to that goal.
Speak to our team of experienced and competent engineers today to find out how we can help you put the right safety systems in place should the worst ever happen.
