Apollo Technology Chosen For £1 Billion Hospital Redevlopment
Apollo fire detection technology has been chosen to provide
protection for the new Royal London Hospital.
The new Royal London Hospital will be Britain's biggest new
hospital and home to a range of specialist centres, including
London's leading trauma and emergency care centre and one of the
UK's major children's hospitals. The hospital's state-of-the-art
facilities will provide world class healthcare to an area
undergoing significant regeneration. Work is ongoing, with the
hospital opening in December 2011, and more than 7,500 Apollo
devices are already installed on site.
The Royal London is part of Barts and the London NHS Trust,
which consists of St Bartholomew's Hospitals and the London Chest
Hospital. The Trust is in the middle of delivering a £1 billion new
hospitals development - the largest in the world. The first phase
saw the opening in March 2010 of the Bart's Cancer Centre.
Following the opening of the new Royal London Hospital later this
year, the project will be completed with the opening of a
specialist cardiac centre at Barts in 2016. The main contractor on
the project is Skanska and the fire system contract was awarded to
Static Systems Group plc.
Continuity of care
Barts and the London has one of the best patient survival
records in the NHS. The Royal London Hospital provides district
general hospital services for the City and Tower Hamlets and
specialist tertiary care services for patients from across east
London and beyond. More than 868,000 visitors passed through its
doors in 2009-10.
The Royal London was founded in 1740 and has gradually expanded
to occupy a number of buildings on its site in Whitechapel. The new
development replaces a number of the old buildings with a coherent
structure, purpose-built to support the delivery of 21st century
clinical care. The design is sympathetic to the hospital's historic
buildings, which are being retained, including the landmark facade
on Whitechapel Road.
The new hospital comprises one 16-storey and one 17-storey
tower, known as South and Centre, and one ten-storey tower (North
Tower). The Centre Tower is equipped with a helipad for London's
Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (HEMS), which is based at the
hospital. Each of the three towers is served at ground level by a
main lobby giving access to the lifts and staircase.
Fire protection
Meeting the hospital's highly complex set of fire protection and
evacuation requirements was the responsibility of Static Systems
Group, who was responsible for the design, supply, installation and
commissioning of the system. The comprehensive fire detection
system is designed around Static Systems' Series 900 panel, which
is ideal for phased installation and occupation.
37 fire alarm panels have been provided in total, with two
panels protecting each floor of the hospital except at ground
level, where three control panels are installed. Each panel
controls approximately 20 fire alarm zones, although this varies
depending on the floor and tower with the lower floors having a
greater number of zones per panel. Main control of the fire alarm
network is from the Fire Command Centre, which has also been
supplied with a sprinkler data gathering unit which registers
activation and status of sprinkler flow switches and zone isolation
valves throughout the building.
Due to the complex nature of the building and the setting, a
number of interfaces were included in the project design. They
enable other critical equipment to be activated in the event of an
alarm, including automatic fire dampers, cold smoke extract
systems, lifts, generators, oil & gas valves, door closers and
air handling units. In addition a modem link was created with St
Bartholomew's Hospital, which is two miles away, to alert the Royal
London in the event of an emergency.
Approximately 5,000 Apollo Discovery multisensors and 2,500 XP95
mains switching Input/Output Units have been installed to date to
protect the 675-bed hospital.
Chris Smith, Systems Engineering Manager at Static Systems,
said:
"When you have a project that is on such a large scale, you want
a reliable system that is easy to configure. Our panels give us
flexibility to network and install the system over time".
"Apollo's analogue addressable technology gave us the
reliability and flexibility to meet the client's requirements on
this demanding project, whilst its open protocol gives us the
ability to mix and match products to meet the specific needs of the
site. It also future-proofs the fire system because Apollo analogue
addressable devices are forwards compatible so any future system
extension and maintenance will be simple to achieve."
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