Hochiki’s ESP sensors serve to protect The Livingstone Academy

The Livingstone Academy in Bournemouth is a brand new ‘all-through’ school that combines excellent education with an innovative skills development programme, ensuring students from the ages of four right up to 18 have the skills and qualifications they need to succeed in modern life.

The establishment boasts upwards of 1,800 students and members of staff and covers four stories’ worth of brand new, purpose-built facilities alongside historical buildings. This setting also includes a Magistrates’ Court and a Coroners’ Court, which will be used by the students through time for lectures and staging Houses of Parliament-style debates.

Targets for facilities team

Preserving this incredible educational facility as well as ensuring the safety of the next generation was of the upmost importance to the facilities management team. With a proven track record of over 40 years in design and build contracting, J&B Hopkins Ltd served as the M&E contractor who engaged with Southern Fire Alarms as the fire installation team.

With the opening of the state-of-the-art school imminent, there were strict deadlines to be met so the team at Southern Fire Alarms wanted to install a system that was quick and easy to fit, as well as simple to maintain. The company opted for Hochiki Europe’s ESP range.

The ESP product range offers many benefits that ensure optimal protection and peace of mind, particular so in school settings. Its cutting-edge technology guarantees the swift and precise detection of potential threats, enhancing response times and minimising damage.

The range boasts “unparalleled” reliability, reducing false alarms and ensuring accurate alerts in critical situations. Moreover, these products are intelligently designed for easy integration with existing systems, rendering upgrades both seamless and cost-effective (something which appealed to the project managers for this install, in fact).

Reliable devices

Naomi Fell, contract manager at Southern Fire Alarms, noted: “We’ve worked with Hochiki products for several years now across multiple projects and industries. We choose Hochiki almost every time because they know how to design and manufacture reliable and easy-to-fit devices.”

In addition to standard smoke detectors, several multi-sensors have also been fitted. There was a need to ensure the risk of false alarms was completely reduced. The ACD multi-sensors from the ESP range were selected as they’re fully EN 54 accredited and work across three sensing elements: heat, smoke and CO (all of them vital in a school environment). They’ve been fitted across areas that had a high risk of false alarm, areas such as in the food technology and science laboratories.

Fell continued: “The fit-out team also really liked the fact that there’s a common mounting base for all of the ESP devices. Hochiki’s devices really are some of the simplest to fit. There’s no compromise on quality, either.”