The Ricoh Stadium is home to Coventry City football club, as well as a host of other sporting and leisure amenities. This article explains how Swift Fire & Security installed a comprehensive life safety system – without running into extra time.
Faced with the tightest of deadlines to complete the fire detection and alarm system at Coventry City Football Club’s new ground, Swift Fire and Security had to pull out all the stops. Since time was of the essence, they were particularly glad of their decision to install Gent Vigilon technology, with its ease of set-up and commissioning. The 32,000-seater stadium is part of a GB pound 113 million multi-purpose complex – the Ricoh Arena – all of which is covered by the Gent by Honeywell fire detection and alarm system. The system has had to provide a high degree of flexibility to meet the site’s diverse and changing needs, which were still evolving as the project got underway.
The stadium provides services around the clock, every day of the week. In addition to a modern football ground, the Ricoh Arena has event and exhibition halls, conference suites, office space, and dual function rooms that are used as hotel bedrooms overlooking the pitch, and convert to corporate hospitality boxes on event days. There is also a fitness club, as well as community facilities and numerous bars and restaurants. Beneath the stadium, space has been provided for further development – potentially for a casino, subject to government approval. Swift Fire & Security supplied all of the site’s life safety and security systems, including access control, CCTV as well as the fire detection and alarm system.
The fire detection system comprises some 1300 detectors from Gent by Honeywell controlled by a multi-panel network of seven Vigilon control panels. The analogue optical heat sensors are complemented by 200 manual call points and numerous interface units, some of which connect to a site-wide public address and voice alarm system. There are also interfaces to the building management system and mechanical plant.
The site fire plan has been tailored to precisely meet the stadium requirements. Vigilon’s software has allowed the areas to be sectored to ‘evacuate’ or ‘alert’ status, providing a more manageable process in the event of an evacuation. The fire system has also been configured with pre-set delays to alert key staff to potential fire conditions, allowing immediate investigation before evacuating the entire site. A Gent graphical mimic panel, located in the control room, provides a site-wide view of the system and gives an immediate, at-a-glance indication of the location of any fire condition across the stadium complex.
The large number of individual Gent devices that can be supported and powered by an individual Vigilon loop meant that fewer panels were needed, than might have been the case had a different system been used. This helped to control both installation time and costs. So too, did the fact that every Gent sensor and all other loop devices are fitted with a short-circuit isolator, which eliminates the need to make separate provision. This provides more protection to the stadium and its occupants, as any cable fault can be isolated and will not result in the loss of detection within that zone.
By allowing rapid pinpointing of faults, the short-circuit isolators built into every device also reduced commissioning time. Further significant savings of time resulted from the panel’s soft-addressing facility, which enables all device addresses to be assigned completely automatically. This capability meant that the commissioning of the system was particularly quick. Where access to sensors is difficult – as in the case of the high level detectors in the stadium – or where the interior decoration has been completed and the access to rooms is limited, this is of even greater benefit.
Owing to the size of the Ricoh Arena and the different uses it is put to, Swift has had to set up some complex cause and effect schedules within the Gent system. Honeywell by Gent says this did not pose a problem, because of the power of the Vigilon panels and the flexibility of their software – a feature that also proved crucial when the fire strategy had to be reconfigured during the course of the contract. The system is also designed to be easy to expand to accommodate future developments at the site.
The Ricoh Arena project was handled through Swift Fire & Security’s Birmingham branch. The company, which has nine offices around the UK with its headquarters in Manchester, is one of only three companies to be approved as a Gent Technology Centre. This is the highest level of accreditation that is awarded to the network of system integrators who supply Gent by Honeywell fire detection and alarm equipment.
