Global voice alarm and audio safety specialists Vox Ignis, has supplied an Enhanced Public Address (EPA) system with integrated Emergency Voice Communications (EVC), to protect the residents of seven high rise buildings at Scholes Village, Wigan.
Scholes Village is a complex of residential towers, just outside the town centre. It is the subject of an upgrade programme to improve safety, integrity and wellbeing across seven towers and 700 apartments that will hugely benefit current and future residents.
The EPA/EVC system is stand-alone (not connected to the fire alarm) and fully compliant with BS EN 50849:2017 and certified to EN54-16 by UL. It allows building managers, emergency services to alert apartments, floors and stairwells in any incident with recorded or live voice in their apartments and in common areas. It also delivers secure, resilient communication between incident managers and first responders in and incident; and allows occupants to call for help when requiring evacuation assistance using a disabled refuge system.
The system installed is based on Vox Ignis’ EN54-16 Unicorn Voice PAVA system that unifies public address, voice alarm, fire telephone, disabled refuge, assistance alarm and visual alarm devices together in one system for the first time.
Each of the towers at Scholes Village has a distributed, redundant, fault tolerant network of one master EPA panel with integrated fist microphone, fire telephone and three distributed EPA panels. The system features Vox Ignis’ touch screen system VoxOS, that shows the visual status of the system clearly and allows quick control and programming, and programmable Unicorn Buttons that allow pre-recorded messages to be sent to selected zones at the press of a button.
Each panel delivers four power and output tuned speaker circuits and eight combined fire telephone and disabled refuge lines. Over one thousand Vox Ignis speakers are installed across the project. In addition, over 160 Vox Ignis vandal-proof Type C outstations provide combined disabled refuge and fire telephone functions in the fire-protected stairwells.
Councillor Susan Gambles, cabinet portfolio holder for housing at Wigan Council: “This investment is crucial to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our tenants and underlines our commitment to working with tenants to carry out much-needed improvements. We were delighted to work with Vox Ignis and their Unicorn Voice system to install a system customised to our precise needs.”
Leeds-based Elite Audio Ltd supplied and commissioned the system, with installation managed by Fieldway. Dominic Carney, sales director of Elite Audio said: “The Unicorn Voice system has enabled us to use the EVCS, PA and Voice Alert functions it uniquely offers, to design and economically deploy a system that meets Wigan’s precise needs. As with all Vox Ignis products the performance and quality of the system is best in class and the touch screen control and programming software makes configuration and control incredibly simple.”
Jeremy Kirkup sales director at Vox Ignis said: “We’re delighted to be working with Wigan on this project. The features of Unicorn Voice and our approach to energy efficiency are impressing architects, consultants and specifiers across our markets. We designed it to be a system that takes a leap forward in quality and capability that meets the requirements of the modern built environment.”
Vox Ignis is a global specialist in voice alarm, emergency voice communication, and assistance call systems. Designed and manufactured in the UK and sold under the Vox Ignis and leading OEM brands worldwide, its products amplify the safety of millions of people and buildings every day. For more information, visit www.vox-ignis.com.
