Case Study: Life Safety Equipment Monitoring

Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

Ensuring public safety at all times within your facility can be an intimidating challenge, especially in times where staffing may be minimal.  Learn how Fire Monitoring of Canada Inc. (FMC) was able to assist a public entity to provide a safer environment by leveraging their existing life safety & fire alarm monitoring equipment.

The Challenge

Our customer operated public buildings, which included washroom facilities that were required to be equipped with panic buttons to comply with AODA policies within the province. In this scenario, when a panic button is triggered within the washroom, a light signal or audible alarm is activated outside of the washroom doors.

The problem occurred when there were minimal staff on site and the panic alarm system was activated. In this scenario, a patron comes into the facility and experiences an episode that requires them to activate the panic button.  Although a visual or audible signal is started, if no one is available to see the light or hear the alarm, then the patron could be left stranded in the washroom for an extended period of time.

The Solution

As an alarm monitoring facility, FMC is able to monitor anything that is equipped with a dry contact relay. As a result, we were able to leverage the dry contact relays that already existed in the panic button system, and tie them into the FMC monitoring panel within the building.  As a result, these panic alarms are now coming into FMC’s Signals Receiving Centre (SRC), allowing us to dispatch on these alarms according to the protocols established with this customer.

This solution has now been in place for 2-3 months, and there have been no issues with the functionality. The customer has expressed their happiness with the results, and is now beginning to plan rolling this solution out at many more locations throughout the area.

Other Applications

The alarm monitoring applications that are demonstrated by this scenario are plentiful.  As discussed here, as long as the device or system you are hoping to monitor is equipped with a dry contact relay, FMC has the ability to monitor it.  Think about any event that may take place at your facility that you need to know of when it occurs.  These types of events could include things such as:

• Nurse Call Systems
• High water alarms
• Power system interruptions
• Building environmental systems/Building Automation Systems
• Temperature alarms
• Man down alarms

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