The fire alarm panel of tomorrow will provide more in the way of remote diagnostics, status monitoring and integration with other building management systems. Suzanne Donovan, marketing manager of Chubb Fire, consults her crystal ball.
The fire alarm panel of tomorrow will be radically different from the one in use today as manufacturers tap in to new technologies, such as remote diagnostics, and fire engineers demand systems that are more flexible in their use and application and more reliable in their performance.
These developments will not just benefit the installer, they will also help the end-user as ‘flexibility’ translates into lower service and maintenance charges, a more tangible lifecycle cost, greater integration with associated technologies including CCTV, status monitoring of components in the fire safety strategy (such as fire doors), and a better performance with a dramatic impact on false alarm reduction.
But how are such improvements to be realised? One of the key areas that manufacturers have been working on is ease of installation, and specifically the commissioning process. The desire has long been for a system that is plug and play. The panel of tomorrow will be ‘pre-commissioned’ before an engineer even visits the site.
Technology is such today that clever simulation software and a PC can afford a new panel its factory acceptance test, and be ready to install fully commissioned before it even leaves the building. If that may sound a little far fetched, it isn’t. Chubb Fire estimates that such technology represents a potential 22% saving on the time an engineer spends on site commissioning a system, with the commensurate savings in terms of money and resource.
Remote potential
The remote possibilities don’t end there. Manufacturers are steadily learning many of their lessons from those involved in the development of new building management systems (BMS), and two areas in particular: condition-based monitoring and remote diagnostics.
Both are innovative. Condition-based monitoring enables engineers to look at the health of panels before attending a site. They can pre-examine the system, and through the panel identify faults and those parts of the system that may need changing or replacing. The ability to connect remotely and diagnose a fault within a panel might not be new to the BMS or security industries, but for the fire industry it signals a real step forward!
The benefits of such remote diagnosis and fault-finding are considerable. From a service engineer’s perspective, it means attending a site armed with the appropriate tools and parts for the job. (Many will have shared the frustration of engineers arriving, only to turn around and come back later with the necessary components). It also means that an engineer’s skill can be better deployed, and not wasted identifying a simple fault. From an end-user’s perspective, it means that the time a service engineer spends on site can be reduced, and the labour savings passed on.
There is also a strong ‘green’ argument. Engineers can plan the replacement cycle for system components to maximise the life of the system and minimise consumption, with no unnecessary journeys back and forth.
The panel of the future will not just be about making the life of the engineer easier, or reducing service and maintenance costs. It will also be about the technology inherent within the system. With demand increasing for greater security, manufacturers are again looking at the advantages of closed protocol systems.
Open and shut case?
The debate, of course has been had several times already. Many people, perhaps, had thought that the days of closed protocol systems were over. The main concerns about them are that end-users do not want to be tied to a single manufacturer, unable to shop around for better service and maintenance agreements or train their own engineers because the protocol is manufacturer-specific. Customers may be frustrated that they are obliged to continue a relationship with a supplier that has broken down or where service levels have dropped. Closed protocol isn’t an issue, however, when the service levels are high, and when the lifecycle costs have been agreed in advance. Indeed without such an agreement, costs for even open protocol technology can easily spiral out of control.
The principal benefit of open protocol – that virtually anyone can change or manipulate the data on a panel – could be its Achilles heel, especially where liability is an issue should something go wrong, or there is an argument over warranty because the system has not been properly maintained.
Closed protocol, on the other hand, is by definition more secure. It ensures greater integrity of the panel and helps guard against incompetence. Given that the new Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order refers specifically to issues of “competence” and “responsibility” resting with the building owner, closed protocol offers greater protection and re-assurance that a panel has not been inadvertently tampered with.
The benefits of IP
The panel of the future will also be fully IP (Internet Protocol) functional. Again, installers who work across both the fire and security sectors will have watched the development of IP in security over the last two or three years, and will understand the benefits it can deliver. Now the fire industry can look to enjoy the same benefits. Primarily, this will give end-users the opportunity of using existing infrastructure (i.e. networks) to view the state of their alarm systems from their PC or laptop.
This is especially useful for national and international businesses with many sites, or facilities management companies responsible for many buildings. By simply connecting to their intranet, they can have visibility of individual systems over a network, or view data on all their sites – from anywhere in the world.
As with advanced panels today, the new generation of fire panels will have multi-panel connectivity (i.e. the ability to network several panels together to create a bigger system). The state of each of these can be monitored, giving end-users not just a view of their current health, but also access to vital management information on the system’s performance, including the performance of their service and maintenance provider!
The third significant technological advancement will be the ability of new panels to integrate with associated technologies, notably CCTV. Again there are arguments for and against integration. But the opportunity to link cameras to an alarm panel, for example, (via an IP address) so that a customer can literally see an incident as it is triggered, is a benefit that few would ignore.
False alarm management
Of course, the whole raison d’etre behind the development of better, more sophisticated panels is to ultimately provide better levels of protection and better levels of false alarm management. Panels can link with all manner of detectors, but new, intelligent panels will analyse a combination of factors to determine whether an alarm can be confirmed as genuine.
For certain premises this is essential. The mayhem caused by evacuating a hospital or airport, for example, for an alarm that turns out to be ‘false’ cannot be overstated. The ability to identify your sector of a building, as well as zones, could assist in rapid identification of the situation and assist evacuations. Financial institutions can lose millions of pounds in downtime for evacuating a building they didn’t have to. No panel can ever be foolproof, but the those of tomorrow will be considerably more reliable.
Panels are also likely to take advantage of other advances in technology. Evacuation key switches, for example, will be built in rather than bolted on at additional cost. Lonworks will be utilised to enable greater connectivity to third-party systems and provide an output to other disparate technologies. Panels will facilitate centralised reporting, with a complete audit trail and full data linked to a graphics package to show what triggered an alarm and why. SMS text messages will be sent in the event of an alarm to the keyholder. (It is not too implausible to think that the information a customer receives in the event of an alarm – perhaps integrated with images of the event – will ultimately be passed on to the firefighters attending an incident to give them a more detailed picture of what they face).
What is certain is that the fire alarm panel of tomorrow will be radically different from the one in use today. It will be more flexible, more adaptable and more relevant to the needs of engineers and end-users alike. And it will be designed to meet not just the requirements of current legislation, but also the regulations and reforms of the future.
