Fire and life safety compliance specialist CDS, which has a thirty-year background in working with public sector organisations across England and Wales, has won contracts to install new fire alarm systems at schools in Derbyshire and Bedfordshire.
Derbyshire County Council appointed the company to provide emergency lighting and fire alarms to protect children, staff and visitors at Linton Primary School in Swadlincote near Burton-upon-Trent.
The school, which educates around 280 three- to 11-year-olds, needed to replace its old conventional fire alarm system with a multi-loop Ziton addressable alternative. The technology is able to pinpoint the source of an outbreak of fire or smoke precisely, unlike its predecessor which is only able to give an approximate location. The work, which will be completed by Easter 2023, also includes additional emergency lighting to cover escape routes.
CDS is also part-way through a similar project for Wenlock Church of England School in Luton, which caters for more than 300 pupils between the ages of seven and 11.
The school’s previous fire alarm system, as well as being non-addressable, had limited detection zones and a number of faults.
The new style addressable system – so called as it enables the programmer to include an ‘address’ within each alarm panel – will mean valuable time is saved in locating any fire or smoke outbreak and fewer false alarms, which are a huge drain on 999 resources.
The schools are the latest in a long history of fire safety specification, provision, maintenance and compliance services carried out by CDS in the education and public sectors.
CDS provides highly complex systems for universities across England and Wales, including one of the largest Gent Vigilon networked fire safety systems in the UK at Nottingham Trent University. The technology is designed to protect the lives of tens of thousands of students, staff and visitors across more than 60 buildings and three campuses.
CDS now exclusively oversees the fire safety strategy throughout all three of its campuses. Each has numerous Gent Vigilon analogue addressable systems which are networked together and then ‘globally networked’ between the sites.
Other high profile local authority clients include Leicester City Council, which chose CDS to undertake a major installation project at its magnificent Victorian town hall, and Leicestershire Police for which it looks after more than 20 buildings scattered across the county, including its HQ at Enderby.
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