At the new phase development project, Wood Wharf, land is being reclaimed from West India Dock South as part of the redevelopment of a new 34-acre estate as an expansion of Canary Wharf. The ten-year project will provide over 3200 new homes, nearly 2 million sq ft of commercial office space and 335,000 sq ft of retail and leisure space.
Tubular piles inserted into the water of the docks allow a cofferdam to be built, and so form new land foundations for construction.
To protect workers from potential flooding during construction, an alarm system was essential. This is where Bull Products, with their many years of safety alarms experience, was called in to help with a solution. Working with Canary Wharf Contractors, Bull Products developed a special panic alarm system based on its proven Cygnus wireless alarm.
Colin Jordan, construction manager, logistics at Canary Wharf Contractors is impressed with the new alarm system, “If anything is not right, the system sets off the siren immediately. Also whichever alarm has been triggered can be instantly seen on the control panel and a text alert is sent out at the same time”. He continued, “It’s a great system and we have just ordered further units for an extension of the cofferdam which we are working on. It’s also very versatile as we will be able to move it around and re-use it as first aid call points or fire alarms when we start ground-up construction work. We would certainly recommend it for any development site”.
The customised Cygnus units include panics buttons, beacons, a traffic light system to ensure safe travel to certain areas on site, and a central Cygnus control panel with an auto dialler GSM Communicator installed which provides out-of-hours protection by auto-dialling up to ten phone numbers of responsible persons in an emergency. Additional call points and first aid alerts from the Cygnus range can link up to this bespoke system enabling an entire site-wide alarm and evacuation service.
The Cygnus alarm system can link as many as 480 alarm and detector units in different zones on a site, and individual units can be fire alarm call points, first aid alerts, combined call points and first aid alerts, smoke detectors or heat detectors.
Designed for use on construction sites, the CE marked Cygnus system has been developed for use in dense concrete and steel structured buildings and areas where there are many other radio frequencies in operation, and so particular attention has been given to achieving an impressive connection range. Where there are multiple sites within range of each other, the Cygnus system has been designed to operate on different site addresses in order to keep each system separate and free from interference.
The optional control panel is a major feature of the Cygnus system and provides a very sophisticated capability with an event log function which records any events such as an alarm activation, low battery warning, and signal faults, all of which can be viewed if necessary in the history folder held on the panel. The system also has the ability to test all units and has an evacuate function which will act as a call point to the rest of the alarm units.
Each unit in the system can provide the panel with information at regular intervals. This explicit information confirms the unit is still present and what the battery status of each device is. Known as the ‘heart beat’ this message is monitored by the control panel where fitted and if the ‘heart beat’ is not heard for several intervals, the control panel logs a full status for that unit. A PIR option is now available on any of the modules which can detect an intruder and alert off-site personnel for added safety protection.