DIGITAL ADDRESSABLE FIRE ALARM SYSTEM
INTERFACES AND GENERAL DESCRIPTION
GENERAL
RELATED DOCUMENTS
Drawings and general provisions of the Contract, including General and Supplementary Conditions and various other Division Specification Sections, apply to this Section.
The related documents section is very critical for the successful interfacing of the Fire Alarm System in an Airport Terminal Building. This excerpt was derived from another airport project and as you may see, there were some interfaces missing. These will be described below.
SUMMARY of WORKS
Contractor shall provide all Labor, Materials, Contractor’s Equipment and Plant to fully execute the requirements to furnish, deliver, and install the Works as expressly described in the Drawings and Specification, or implied therefrom, and in accordance with the Contract. It is the intent of this Specification section that the work performed pursuant hereto be complete and acceptable in every respect for its intended purpose. It is further required that the provisions of this Specification section shall be complementary to, and shall be correlated with, the requirements of the Contract. Nothing in this specification section shall limit the scope of work as required by the Contract.
COMMON RELATED WORK AND INTERFACES (most common)
Note that these interfaces are only defined generally. What will happen if there is a fire and it signals (somehow) the Public Address System? Will an announcement be made? If so, will there be any delay in this announcement to check for a False Alarm? Does both the FAS and PAS have this relationship defined? These definitions are generally in the Interface Design Document (IDD) and should be defined by the Design Engineer and included in the Specifications, prior to Tender. If they are not, get ready for claims. An IDD should be made for every interface, both electronic/IT and Physical.
- PUBLIC ADDRESS AND MASS NOTIFICATION SYSTEMS
- COMMON WORK RESULTS FOR ELECTRONIC SAFETY AND SECURITY
- SECURITY MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEM
- SECURITY ACCESS CONTROL SYSTEM
- COMMON WORK RESULTS FOR ELECTRICAL
- ENGINE GENERATOR
- ELEVATORS
- ESCALATORS
- MOVING W ALKS
- ELECTRIC-DRIVE CENTRIFUGAL FIRE PUMPS
- CONTROLLERS FOR FIRE-PUMP DRIVERS
- WATER-BASED FIRE SUPPRESSION SYSTEMS
- CLEAN-AGENT FIRE EXTINGUISHING SYSTEMS
- BUILDING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
- GENERAL FAN REQUIREMENTS
- SMOKE CONTROL FANS
- AIR CURTAINS
- AIR DUCT ACCESSORIES
- FIRE SMOKE DAMPERS
- MODULAR INDOOR CENTRAL-STATION AIR- HANDLING UNITS
- BHS (BAGGAGE HANDLING SYSTEM), Fire Shutters.
The fundamental problem with these interfaces is that they are generally electronic or IT type interfaces. For example, there are no physical interfaces identified. The BHS system will have sensors and water systems installed in and around the conveyors. This will involve at least two contractors (BHS and FAS). So how does the BHS know that someone else will be installing devices on their BHS steelwork? Did somebody check both the BHS and FAS specifications? What will happen if there is damage done to either of the contractor’s works? Sometimes BHS conveyors are attached to the ceiling structure. Can the structure handle the weight and vibration?
Performing a GAP analysis, a specialty of Langholff Digital Solutions, does these types of questions and engineering design works.
SUMMARY (should be more detailed, and make sure these interfaces and devices are properly defined in the subsequent sections of the Specification)
This section of the specifications includes the furnishing, installation, and connection of the fire alarm equipment to form a complete coordinated system ready for operation. It shall include, but not be limited to, alarm initiating devices, alarm notification appliances, control units, fire safety control devices, annunciators, power supplies, display units, workstations, printers, piping and wiring as shown on the drawings and specified.
Main DAFAS Components Includes (Maybe more or less depending on the design):
- Fire-alarm control units.
- Fire Alarm Terminal Boards (FATB)
- Data Gathering Panels (DGP)
- Smoke Control system panels (SCSP)
- Manual fire-alarm boxes.
- System smoke detectors.
- Non-system smoke detectors.
- Heat detectors.
- Notification appliances.
- Firefighters’ two-way telephone communication service.
- Magnetic door holders.
- Remote annunciator.
- Addressable interface device.
- Air Aspiration Smoke Detection.
- Video Smoke and Fire Detection
- Digital alarm communicator transmitter.
- System printer.
- Fire alarm wiring
SYSTEM DESCRIPTION
Note: This section is General and can be used as a reference, not just copy and paste.
- High speed peer to peer networked Non-coded, digital and fully addressable fire alarm system.
- System will consist of a collection of Fire Alarm Control Units (nodes), Smoke Management Control panels, Network Control Annunciators (NCA), Network Web Server (NWS), a computer based Color Graphic User Interface shall interface together creating a high speed network system.
- The Network shall be true peer-to-peer communications architecture. Each node stores its own program and communicates equally with all other nodes.
- The Network shall be an IP based Ethernet architecture suitable for long range use on fiber optic media or wire media.
- The Network Control Annunciator and Workstation shall be capable of displaying and controlling all Fire Alarm Control Units on the network.
- Fire Alarm network shall be (latest version) NFPA Style 7, using fiber optics as the communications media and multiplexed signal transmission, dedicated to fire- alarm service only. The network shall be capable of connecting two nodes separated by XXX Km.
- The network shall be capable of connecting not less than XXX nodes and expandable to YYY nodes.
- Fire alarm system with smoke management controls and monitoring status of smoke management components.
- XXXX (XXX) HDMI LCD YY inch LCD displays (check your IT Master Plan), including gateways and software to manage the fire alarm network communications protocol with the displays. The displays will be located in the Main Fire Command Center, and provide the following displays:
- Fire Alarm system status.
- Fire Alarm system in alarm
- Smoke management system
- Video Detection system
- Add more as necessary for the actual site condition.
The system shall be capable of providing automatic sensitivity control of smoke detectors.
The system shall include the following sub systems.
- Air Aspiration type smoke detection.
- Video smoke detection.
- Pre action sprinkler system.
- Or more depending on the building size and construction
- Add more as necessary for the actual site condition.
The Fire Alarm system shall interface Peer to Peer’ with the Security Management Information System, Security Access Control System and provide alarm information as displayed on the fire alarm panel and all other fire alarm information and zone information for unlocking of emergency egress doors in the relevant fire zones to achieve the sequence of operation. (This may be different depending on your site condition).