|
The acclaimed architect Lord Norman Foster, of Foster Partners, won the 2005 British Construction Industry “Local Authority Building of the Year “award for his design of the Sage Building in Gateshead England. Costing 70million this waterside project at Gateshead Quays on the banks of the river Tyne took ten years of detailed planning by Gateshead Council. The building is the home to the Northern Sinfonia and houses two concert halls, a rehearsal hall bars, restaurants and education facilities all under one steel structure that was “shrink wrapped around” around the halls to create a concourse and common areas.
Consultants Engineers for the project were ARUP Acoustics and Mott Mac Donald while Laing O’Rourke was responsible for construction. Diamond Systems were appointed as the Fire and Voice Evacuation specialist on this prestigious project and were delighted to work with such a professional team.
The building was opened to the public on time in December 2004 and is open 14hrs a day, 363 days per year. Diamond Systems engineered and commissioned the entire Honeywell XLS1000 network Fire Detection and Voice Evacuation system including full integration with the state of the art music broadcast system within the concert halls. The detection system consisting mainly of automatic Smoke/Heat detectors supported by sixteen high level Laser Smoke Beams accommodating building shift and a Vesda Smoke Aspirating system is controlled by panel XLS network system. This XLS1000 system network also provides distributed speaker amplifiers for back of house announcements along with integration into the main Baldwin Boxall amplifier rack for public areas.
At the final handover of the building both the Consultants and Gateshead Council staff commented on the high level professional performance of the Diamond Systems Engineers. In particular they thanked our team for working outside their normal hours successfully reconfiguring the system to include last minute changes to the Fire Strategy delivering the completed system on time for the handover. The Diamond Systems Engineers involved were delighted to receive such high praise as this continues to support their reputation for providing quality networked fire detection and voice evacuation system solutions.
|
