« Prev Next »

The university’s statistics are impressive: the 300-acre campus has over 32 buildings, which are linked by 10 kilometers (6 miles) of underground pedestrian and service tunnels designed to cope with harsh Canadian winters. The Université Laval hosts a sizeable community of approximately 44,000 students and 8,000 employees within an urban/rural setting of dense woods, grasslands and sports fields covering more than half the campus.

Unified Solution
A few years ago, the university’s Board of Governors decided to allocate funds for a new state-of-the-art, code-compliant fire protection network spanning all 32 buildings campus-wide.

The old fire alarm systems were an aging conglomeration of different makes and models. Moving forward, the university sought bids for a standardized system from a single supplier for a true proprietary fire alarm solution. The ONYX Series addressable fire protection system manufactured by NOTIFIER won the bid, which involved replacing every alarm panel, detector and supervisory device.

“I’m from the insurance industry and I’ve never seen a system quite as big as this. It has 35 panels and more than 20,000 supervisory and detection devices,” says Pierre Paquin, Fire Prevention Coordinator for Université Laval.
The old systems presented a series of faults on a regular basis that could have resulted in serious problems. Moreover, the mixture of equipment throughout the campus made it difficult for the university’s security personnel to deal with all of the individual systems. “Each time someone new joined the staff they had to be trained in how to use all of the different panels. That’s one of the main reasons we decided to standardize,” says Paquin.


Network Management
Each building is protected by its own stand-alone fire alarm control panel, functioning as a node on the network. The campus’ network of 35 panels is a combination of AM-2020 and ONYX Series NFS-3030 panels connected via 42 kilometers (26 miles) of multi-mode fiber optic cable run in conduit installed throughout the school’s network of tunnels.

Each node on the system acts as a repeater to reshape and regenerate data signals. Therefore any damage incurred by one or more nodes, due to fire, tampering, etc., will not effect operations and communication among the surviving nodes.
For added redundancy, the university installed the network in a DCLC (Style 7) configuration in which the cable carrying all incoming and outgoing signals are looped through the system in separate conduits. According to Paquin, this type of integration helps to ensure a single line break does not interrupt the transmission of alarm communications.

“Since it’s a DCLC (Style 7) loop, I can lose one cable on the network and still be fully operational,” says Paquin.

The university’s new fire alarm performs as one solitary system supported by NOTI-FIRE-NET, a high-speed (312,500 BPS) data communications network. NOTI-FIRE-NET allows each control panel to maintain its own area of protection while providing monitoring and control capabilities for all other network nodes.

Two NCSs (Network Control Stations), one at the school’s main 911 command center and another at an emergency back-up location, provide immediate monitoring and control of the entire fire alarm network. The NCS is a rack-mounted computer customized with detailed, full-colour graphics of the university campus down to individual building floor plans.

During an event, the NCS automatically navigates to the area displaying the event and a text box simultaneously appears with a detailed description. With an operating environment similar to Windows, authorized personnel can navigate through the screens using simple mouse-clicks.

The NCS houses an unlimited history of system information, including operator logins, events and response data, all stamped with time and date. A dot matrix printer prints each event for a permanent record while an attached colour printer produces a detailed printout of the floor plans and reports. Ease of system maintenance is another NCS highlight. “One of the uses of the NCS is that it allows us to individually deactivate any detectors or supervisory devices, for renovation or testing. We can even deactivate the alarms in an entire building when we perform required testing on fire pumps or sprinkler systems,” says Paquin.

As a back-up to the NCS, a remote annunciator is also connected to the network. The Network Control Annunciator features an LCD display and operator keypad offering the university’s security and facilities staff an alternative means of monitoring and control functions for the entire network.