Fire/Life-Safety Survival in the Great Indoors
Fire/life-safety issues for large venues such as shopping malls, arenas and big-box stores run the gamut. Installing contractors must grasp how to balance the tradeoff among system types, costs and coverage, as well as negotiate the sometimes conflicting goals and demands of others involved in decisions.
“That’s when you pull the architect off to the side and explain, ‘We can do beam detection or discreet air sampling, and it will increase costs just slightly. Otherwise, you’ll have this,’” he says, while showing a photo of the 20 highly visible white spot detectors that will clash with the interior finishes and overall design aesthetic. “You want to make sure when you’re in those meetings that you’re listening to their mission so your system doesn’t interfere with that environment.”
It makes good sense, then, to promote more technologically advanced systems while appealing to the goals and objectives of others involved in the decision-making process — even when it’s a less critical safety design priority such as aesthetics.
A fire and life-safety system is just one component of a commercial property, however. “The owner is not just sweating detectors and fire alarm systems; he’s looking at carpeting, furniture, lights, LEED points, all these other things that go into design,” says Kimmel. “We’re 30 seconds in a four-hour meeting. We have to understand our place as part of a huge system, and it has to all flow together.”
For example, a fire suppression system can limit the amount of damage a fire causes, but if it activates in error, the suppression system itself can cause costly damage or interfere with mission-critical activities. In this case, fire sprinkler monitoring devices are used to ensure fire sprinklers work properly.
What’s the Occupancy?
The type of occupancy — whether it’s transient with a changing mix of people who are unfamiliar with the environment or nontransient with a fairly steady set of people who regularly frequent the space — also matters in large facilities. Even within the institutional and commercial residential building segment, these occupancies can differ. It’s possible to prepare dormitory residents for building evacuations or run test drills for more nonfire emergencies, such as a shooting or severe weather conditions. In a hotel with new guests arriving every day, however, the focus shifts to informing occupants during the crisis.
This makes for a disturbing paradox: The occupants who best know their environments have more warning of and preparation for potential emergencies than those in transient environments who most need this information. It’s understandable, however, given that hoteliers, retailers and theater owners do not care to worry their customers with troubling details that would detract from their enjoyment. Plus, it would be unimaginable from a business standpoint to require a convention center to evacuate show attendees for a disaster drill. The value of such an exercise would be extremely
questionable in any case.
Fire protection engineers and contractors should balance the sometimes conflicting needs of protecting occupants and building assets with protecting a facility’s main mission, be it entertainment, financial interests, education, or other possibilities. One such approach would be to include directional sound technology within the fire or emergency communications system to guide occupants to the nearest safe exit.
Triggered by the fire alarm control panel, directional sound technology emits a broadband sound frequency that occupants intuitively follow, decreasing evacuation times by up to 75%. This helps ensure occupants who are unfamiliar with the building’s egress routes or emergency plans can quickly escape the building safely — even in smoke-filled or darkened buildings with little or no visibility.
What’s Considered Normal?
Although a fire and life-safety contractor usually commands a good understanding of the occupancy and structural type, it’s also wise to evaluate all possible uses. This would include current and future, as well as the conditions under which the fire/life-safety systems will operate.
While reaching an idea of what constitutes normal, everyday use for a large building is fairly simple, it’s also easy to overlook unusual circumstances or application changes that can affect the environment. These out-of-the-ordinary instances could be seasonal in nature, related to special occasions such as concerts and other performances within the facility that impact noise and foot traffic, or physical additions such as a waterfall in a hotel lobby that could muffle notification devices or create problems due to high humidity. When designing for intelligibility, it is important to consider worst-case scenarios for ambient noise, and to provide a voice evacuation system that would meet those requirements (see “Code Speaks Louder About Intelligibility” sidebar).
Planning for the ordinary and the extraordinary within the framework of what’s normal in fire and life-safety system design is just part of the picture. Engineers and contractors also have to balance cost efficiencies, environmental applicability and suitability, and the business interests of all involved parties, among many other factors.
When it comes to life safety, large venues require big thinking.
Roopa Shortt is Audible Visible Marketing Manager for System Sensor.
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