High-Rise Fire Safety for High-Risk Patients
The new maternity and neonatal intensive care facility at the Texas Children’s Hospital boasts a bevy of fire protection equipment, from alarms to smoke detectors to control panels to speaker/strobes and more.
And in Texas, he explains, there are safety requirements to have smoke removal systems in all hospital operating rooms.
“We had to integrate between the Honeywell building management system (BMS) and our system to accomplish that,” he says. “We basically tell the BMS when to open and close fire and smoke dampers, when to start exhaust fans — so if there is a fire in the operating room, it deals with the smoke. The equipment itself, due to the tremendous flexibility in the system software and programming, really makes it easier to handle these complex applications.”
The new technology allows for ease of maintenance as well. For example, it informs operators of a smoke detector in need of cleaning or some other attention. Using the keyboard at any of the fire alarm control panels, operators can also temporarily bypass detectors or other devices when performing maintenance on the system.
FireTron has barcoded all device heads, strobes, panels and other interfaces, says Rinehart. Every test, every replacement and every alert on each and every device can be compiled into a report, allowing for greater detailing of maintenance and tracking of efficiency. That, he says, provides excellent reports to give to authorities having jurisdiction.
“Fire marshals love to see that kind of detailed dat
a,” he claims.
Central Command Monitors Solution
The fire alarm systems protecting the five buildings that comprise Texas Children’s Hospital, plus its new pavilion, are monitored within its own central command center. Rinehart says the recent construction affords the opportunity to move and upgrade the Service Response Center (SRC) to a more ideal location within the pavilion.
Fire, security and medical gas monitoring are just a few of the multiple building systems closely supervised by the hospital’s SRC.
“Anything that happens in the hospital will go through that hub,” explains Rinehart. “Kind of picture a NASA control room, if you would …”
The new SRC will also include the latest NOTIFIER ONYXWorks graphic workstation, providing detailed graphical layouts of each building and all major fire alarm components. Notifications of all devices in-alarm are immediately displayed on facility maps, along with information on the cause of the alarm, enabling a fast assessment and response.
Legacy Equipment Works With New System
One significant advantage of the new fire alarm system is backward-compatibility, affirms Rinehart. “Old technology plays well with new technology as it’s added, and that’s important,” he says.
“Every component of the new system is NOTIFIER — what the hospital wanted is consistency with the systems in its other buildings,” says Kaczmarek.
Fire alarm control panels installed by the local NOTIFIER dealer more than 20 years ago in the hospital’s five other buildings have held up well. Given the technology’s innate backward compatibility, those will be phased over to the latest NFS-3030 panels throughout the next year.
“That’s huge. If we can keep the majority of the system in place and only have to replace the panels, for instance, that’s cost savings to us, but it’s also less intrusive for our patients, staff and visitors,” says Rinehart. “It keeps the continuity of the business together.”
Advice: Be Ready for Change
Both Kaczmarek and Rinehart have advice for other large healthcare campuses undertaking massive expansions.
“The most important thing is flexibility within your campus,” says Kaczmarek. “What I try to tell customers is put in a system that is networkable to other locations — because things change.”
For example, moving the Texas Children’s Hospital SRC from one building to the new pavilion will be quite an undertaking, but it will not involve moving a thousand miles of wire. All Kaczmarek says he’ll need is one piece of fiber-optic cable to connect the new center with the hospital’s technology network.
“It provides an organization with the flexibility to do the different things it wants to do when buildings are added instead of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars,” says Kaczmarek.
FireTron is working with Texas Children’s Hospital on a five-year plan to incorporate technology upgrades, maintenance and other investments.
If you appreciated this article and want to receive more valuable industry content like this, click here to sign up for our FREE digital newsletters!
Related Content
Leading in Turbulent Times: Effective Campus Public Safety Leadership for the 21st Century
This new webcast will discuss how campus public safety leaders can effectively incorporate Clery Act, Title IX, customer service, “helicopter” parents, emergency notification, town-gown relationships, brand management, Greek Life, student recruitment, faculty, and more into their roles and develop the necessary skills to successfully lead their departments. Register today to attend this free webcast!
