Fire Protection at Waterloo Station
As part of the changeover, which began in early 2007 and designed to meet the expanding needs of the site, the existing eight Morley ZXMi fire panels have been replaced together with the addition of a further three panels, running a total of 38 addressable loops. All the panel changeovers have been successfully carried out and Kingfell is currently part-way through the re-programming phase of this major project.
'As the UK's largest station Waterloo covers an area of some 24.5 acres, with many of its facilities located underground,' confirms Kingfell's group operations director, Steve Hitchings. 'In contrast to the industry-standard four loop panels, the new Morley ZX5Se five loop panel provides significantly increased capacity in a highly space-efficient manner and so was seen as best able to meet the diverse and growing demands of this major London transport hub.'
The station's catering and retail facilities, for example, have expanded significantly in recent years. In response, the additional capacity provided by the Morley-IAS upgrade - supporting the latest Hochiki ESP protocol - will provide full protection for new food storage, preparation and cooking facilities.
Kingfell is Network Rail's fire safety partner and service provider for its 11 Southern-based managed stations. 'Under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order (RRFSO), we must constantly re-evaluate and anticipate each site's evolving needs as part of an on-going risk assessment,' confirms Hutchings.
'Waterloo reflects our long-established ability meet Network Rail's fire engineering objectives, by providing and maintaining a fire safety system which ensures the safety of passengers and assets and maintains system compliance. And, equally importantly, the Morley-IAS based solution has proven reliability, so minimising the risk of false alarms - mission-critical in a mass transport environment handling more than 25,000 passengers per hour at peak periods.'
The Morley panels' open architecture has also provided a high level of flexibility during implementation and re-programming. 'This is especially important in a highly challenging transport environment, in which all work has to be carried out during the narrow time window of overnight 'engineering hours' in order to minimise disruption,' says Morley-IAS sales manager, UK & Ireland, Keith Minster.
'Change is set to continue at Waterloo over the next few years, with passenger numbers set to double and the departure of Eurostar,' he adds. 'In response, the combination of Morley-IAS' extensive networking capability and Kingfell's highly proactive consultative approach is ideally placed to ensure that passengers, staff and Network rail itself continue to benefit from the very latest in fire safety protection.'
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