In 2020 PFS Group successfully completed a CDP CAT A base build project for Gratte Brothers in conjunction with the main contractor Sir Robert McAlpine and their client, British Land.
The 135 Bishopsgate project had a contract value of approximately £1.5 million over a period of 14 months for the design, installation and commission of the fire detection, PAVA and EVCS systems. The project formed part of British Land’s redevelopment of the Broadgate site in Central London which is being completed in phases.
The schemes target was to re-instate the building to CAT A status after all tenants were vacated as part of work completely replace M&E services within the building.
PFS Group were responsible for the design of the system as part of this we partnered with Honeywell Gent to deliver the best all round performance required by such a large project. There were many challenges along the way encompassing all the 3rd party services to be monitored and actioned by the fire systems on site and the numerous M&E contractors involved with a heavy coordination element.
One particularly challenging aspect of the design was the requirement of a cascading alert and evacuation message throughout the site in line with the client’s fire strategy and limitations of footfall on stairwells. This impacted heavily on the numbers of fire panels required and needed a lot of hard work from our commissioning teams and senior programmer who all rose to the challenge and drove the project to a successful completion.
The systems installed consisted of Honeywell Gent life safety systems with a back bone network of fourteen Vigilon panels with Squad devices. The PAVA systems are a fibre network of five custom made Honeywell PAVA racks with fire microphones and PA microphones as required. The speaker systems utilised on the project were also produced by Honeywell.
The project has a front-end GUI graphics system and numerous gas and water extinguishing systems throughout the building including flame detection in the HV and Life safety generator rooms.
There are a number of lightwells and atriums within the building which are protected by Honeywell Gent aspiration detection systems. For the EVCS solution we partnered with Vox Ignis to provide a combined system of fire telephones, refuge points and DDA WC alarms all monitoring back to a central point.
Overall, this project was a great success for the PFS Group team and we are proud to still maintain the systems we installed at this property many years later.