The Redi shopping center, located in Kalasatama and developed by SRV, was completed in 2018. Since then, SRV has built four residential high-rises in the area, as well as Finland’s tallest office building, the Horisontti Tower.
“Over the years, the Kalasatama area has become very familiar to PAP,” says Oskari Muhonen, a systems designer at PAP Group. “We installed fire alarm systems in the first shopping center to be completed, Redi, and since then we’ve been working on fire safety in every one of the Kalasatama towers.”
Top Professionals Working Together
PAP has been involved in the Kalasatama projects as a subcontractor for the building services company Amplit Oy. “We have served as both a systems supplier and a fire alarm contractor. In the latter role, we have, among other things, reviewed the plans and ensured that the installation work is carried out in accordance with fire alarm system guidelines. In addition, we have been responsible for system commissioning and testing, as well as the necessary interaction with the authorities.”
The newest of the towers, the Horisontti office building, was a particularly rewarding project for PAP. “We were involved in this project from a very early stage. We worked closely with Ramboll, which was responsible for the electrical design of the building, and with the consulting firm Jensen Hughes, which designed the fire protection systems. This kind of approach makes sense in many ways. By ensuring early on that the solutions planned for the project will actually work in real life, you avoid having to make changes later on—and thus also avoid unnecessary additional costs.”
A wide variety of special challenges
Oskari Muhonen explains that the groundwork for fire safety in the high-rise buildings was laid as early as the construction phase of the Redin shopping center. “The high-rise buildings are an extension of the shopping center, as they were built on the same foundation as it. The future high-rise buildings were already taken into account in the loop design of Red’s fire alarm systems and in the specification of the speaker lines for the voice evacuation system. During the design phase, the spaces on the shared foundation were reviewed, and the boundaries of the individual properties were determined. This was important because property-specific fire alarm systems must be clearly the responsibility of each individual property.”
The design of fire protection for high-rise buildings has its own unique characteristics. “For example, special attention had to be paid to cabling and its routing. We also had to approach the placement of central units differently than we would in a lower-rise building. In high-rise buildings, these units are distributed across different floors.”
The control of elevators in the event of a fire also required special consideration. “The high-rise buildings share the same basement space with the shopping center. This means that if, for example, a fire breaks out in the shopping center, the elevators in the towers cannot be lowered. The towers have many more complex elevator control functions than a typical building. Generally speaking, it is our responsibility to ensure that everything operates according to specifications during an evacuation. This requires a great deal of programming expertise and knowledge of the equipment. All systems must work together seamlessly.”
The Best Fire Safety for Every Tower
PAP has supplied fire alarm and voice evacuation systems to the Kalasatama shopping center and residential towers. The Horisontti Tower was also equipped with exit and safety lights that were cost-effectively integrated into the fire alarm system. In total, well over a thousand fire alarm field devices were installed in the towers, along with hundreds of safety and exit lights in the Horisontti Tower. The delivery package also included numerous fire alarm control panels and display panels.
The Bosch Paviro public address system handles public address announcements in the towers. “The tower-specific system includes a central unit, hundreds of speakers, and several control units, routers, and amplifiers. Everything works seamlessly in conjunction with the fire alarm system. The fire alarm system triggers announcements to start automatically at the desired location according to predefined logic.”
A great deal of intelligence was also programmed into the equipment. “The fire alarm sends numerous different control signals to various systems—for example, regarding automatic fire suppression, smoke extraction, fire doors, elevators, and ventilation.” Floor-specific pre-alarm and evacuation announcements were programmed into the emergency public address system. In addition, we programmed the flow switch testing task in Horisont to be initiated directly from the fire alarm panel. This simplifies the maintenance phase, as the functionality of the flow switches can now be easily verified during the monthly testing of the fire alarm panels.”
For applications requiring a larger mesh size
Throughout its history, PAP has provided the best fire safety solutions for countless large and small projects throughout Finland. The high-rise buildings in Kalasatama have given PAP solid and diverse experience in high-rise construction projects.
“We’re passionate about fire safety for all kinds of properties. Our expertise is most valuable in projects that require an understanding of and control over large-scale systems. It’s best to bring us on board for the planning process as early as possible. We’re up to date on the latest equipment solutions and regulatory requirements, and we’re happy to assist fire protection engineers in implementing the best, most modern system that’s perfectly suited to the project. When we, as professionals, join forces right from the start of a project, we can create a fire safety system for the site that is reliable, functional, and cost-effective throughout the entire system’s lifecycle.”
Article photo: Mikko Ala-Peijari / PhotoCom Oy