Recommended Engineering Design for Fire Alarm and Voice Evacuation Systems in High-Rise Buildings
(UAE Civil Defence Compliant)
When designing a fire alarm and voice evacuation system for high-rise buildings in the UAE, it’s essential to follow best practices to ensure compliance with UAE Civil Defence regulations and international fire safety standards like BSEN and NFPA. Below are key guidelines for safe and effective design:
1. Central Fire Control Panel
Ensure that the central fire control panel is installed in the fire command center (FCC), and it must include:
• Fire telephone
• Voice evacuation system
• Smoke management system
2. System Integration and Monitoring
It’s not mandatory to integrate all systems into one enclosure, but it’s critical that each system (fire alarm, voice evacuation, smoke management) is monitored continuously to meet UAE Civil Defence requirements.
3.Compliance with UAE Civil Defence Standards
Products must be certified according to BSEN or NFPAstandards to be accepted in the UAE. You’ll need Civil Defence approval through UAE-certified laboratories that issue UAE Certificates of Conformity (UAE COC).
• For Dubai, the Emirates Safety Laboratory must vet the UAE COC for Civil Defence approval.
4. Networked Fire Panels
For networked fire alarm systems, the best practice is to adopt an all-master fault-tolerant network. This ensures that a failure of one panel will only impact that particular panel, without affecting the entire network, improving reliability over master-slave network systems.
5. Network Monitoring at Fire Command Center (FCC)
The main fire panel at the FCC should display all network information, including devices in alarm,trouble, or supervisory states from any panel across the network. Location text should be clearly visible to responders.
6.Master Panel Control
Designate the master fire panel in the FCC to control critical systems like:
• Lifts
• AHU (Air Handling Units)
• Fire dampers
During fire emergencies, Civil Defence officers should be able to control these systems manually in addition to automatic Cause and Effect matrix programming. This is crucial for smoke management and evacuation during fire incidents.
7.Voice Evacuation Systems
For optimal speech intelligibility and clarity, select amplifiers and speakers with a frequency response between 150 Hz to 14 KHz.
• This setup can double as a background music system when not in use for emergency evacuations.
• Ensure that each amplifier is wired in Class A configuration and assigned to individual floors to minimize the risk of system-wide failure due to a single amplifier fault.
8. Additional Key Requirements
To enhance system reliability and compliance with international fire safety standards, ensure that:
• All fire alarm devices include built-in short circuit isolators.
• Provide floor-wise amplifiers during system design.
• Maintain a speech transmission index (STI) of at least 0.5 for clear communication.
• Implement a smoke management system as part of the overall fire safety design.
• Control fire dampers, AHU, and elevators via the fire panel, as required by Civil Defence.
• Use BacNet, ModBus or VFC to connect the fire alarm system to the BMS (Building Management System) for monitoring purposes.
• For residential buildings, a Graphic Command Center is optional unless managing a cluster of buildings from a single FCC.
• Ensure battery backup complies with UAE Civil Defence codes.
9. UAE Civil Defence Compliance
Always refer to the latest UAE Civil Defence codes, which take precedence over general recommendations. Staying compliant is critical for approval and certification.
Written by Sunil Kumar Gopalakrishnan, Managing Director of Cignetix Group of Companies. With over 30 years of experience in life safety systems, Sunil is an industry expert in fire detection,protection systems, Emergency Lighting and voice evacuation solutions for the UAE market.
