The Fire Evac Tour, which featured the industry's latest innovations, made six stops throughout the Italian peninsula and was an enormous success in 2013.
S News has therefore decided to offer a special event: a summary of the contents, including the regulatory and technical aspects, as well as the products and processes.
A “brief guidebook” written by the same six authors of the event itself, designed to provide the correct interpretation of the regulations and product specifications for the tour's true protagonists: the industry's professionals. The 2013 initiative boasted hundreds of participants, and there are already great expectations for 2014.
by the Editorial Staff
What is the Fire Evac Tour?
Luca Vittorio Cappelletti
The FIRE EVAC TOUR was born from the need to combine the technical and regulatory aspects relating to the field of fire detection and voice evacuation systems within a single event.
We were looking for something that would allow us to get in touch with the industry's professionals and create a direct dialogue between the system designers and the authors of the regulations.
In fact, all the speakers at the Fire Evac Tour are members of regulatory work groups, and participate directly in the drafting of the regulations themselves.
The idea, which has proven to be extremely successful, was to bring the speakers “out to the streets”, thus establishing
a direct, concrete and constructive dialogue with industry's professionals.
The initiative, which is intended for educational purposes and is free of charge, has been so successful that we have had to limit the maximum number of admissions on several occasions.
One new element, which has renewed the event's appeal and has aroused even greater interest, was the participation of a law firm that analysed the liabilities borne by the industry's professionals in the event of non-compliance.
The numbers speak for themselves: in 6 stops we obtained 14 sponsorships, accreditation of training credits, and over 650 enrolments, as well as numerous requests to include additional cities in the tour, which will effectively begin in January of 2014. (ndr. Fire Evac Tour 2014, page 27)
The voice of the speakers
Eng. Luca Galli
With the implementation of the UNI ISO 7240-19:2010 standard and the EN 54-16 and EN 54-24 regulations, voice evacuation systems have become an integral part of fire protection systems.
This has provided for the coexistence of both voice audio signals and acoustic signals within fire detection systems.
For this reason, it is necessary to ensure the intelligibility of the system through proper design
and management.
Aspects such as reverberation, background noise, and the acoustic behaviour of the environment must be taken into account by the designer during the system's design phase in order to obtain a comprehensible message, as well as to ensure adequate coverage throughout the area in question.
The aim of the project is to provide basic indications for proper audio design in line with the current regulations, as well as to train the industry's professionals so that they will be able to immediately identify any parameters or elements that could compromise the system's proper functionality.
Today, in fact, the coexistence of the new standards alongside the obsolete EN60849 standard generates ambiguity, and the industry's designers find themselves operating within a sort of limbo from which it is impossible to escape without proper education and training.
One of the primary objectives of the Fire Evac Tour, in fact, is to provide professionals with clear information and practical guidance regarding the correct interpretation of the regulatory aspects.
Alessandro Cofano Esq. and Roberta Romeo Esq.
For technicians and, more generally, all the professionals employed for various purposes, the activities of designing, manufacturing and installing fire detection devices involve specific responsibilities under both criminal and civil law.
The aim of the presentation, therefore, was to concisely explain the formalities and the administrative processes required to obtain fire prevention certifications, as well as to show the technicians and professionals the various liability risks that they may encounter, both in cases of formal violations (irregularities in the submission of documents), as well as more substantial violations relating to materials (design, manufacturing and installation errors); liabilities for which they may be held individually or collectively responsible for damages caused to their clients, or even to third parties, including the employees of the client itself.
What's more, the issue of the proper design, manufacture and installation of fire protection systems is also incorporated within the broader issue of workplace safety, thus resulting in the interweaving and partial overlapping of these two aspects.
The presentation concluded with a number of references to events that actually occurred, which served to show how, all too often, the mere formal compliance with the minimum standards required by the industry's technical disciplines is not enough to indemnify the technician in charge against any potential liability or claims for damages.
Eng. Andrea Francesco Moneta
The continuous evolution of the European regulations in the field of fire detection and the analysis of design errors have led to the creation of a UNI subgroup dedicated to updating the national design standard, with the aim of creating a regulatory text that will lay down clear and useful guidelines for professionals.
The interconnection lines also apply to this context, in fact, since the implementation of EN54-1 has modified the structure of the installations themselves.
The only product standard relating to the interconnections of detection systems was CEI 20-105, which was only aimed at ensuring the integrity of the circuit in the event of an emergency, without taking the transmission features of the lines into account.
The same standard indicates the importance of choosing the correct transmission parameters in order to prevent malfunctions.
The expansion of the relative technologies, the supervision of the line in EVAC systems, and the bi-directionality
of the protocols have resulted in a substantial diversification between fire-resistant power lines and fire-resistant data lines.
The purpose of this presentation, which was given along the various stops of the FIRE EVAC TOUR, as a member of the UNI belonging to the subgroup that drafted the new standard, was to dissect and study
all the relative issues in order to clarify any doubts or design concerns that the industry's professionals may have.
Eng. Fabio Borghini
The fire prevention regulations have undergone various changes in recent years, above all in terms of design.
Simultaneously, there has been a marked transition from conventional analogue systems to more targeted digital systems.
Now more than ever, therefore, designers must place themselves in a position from which they can carry out their projects in a technically suitable manner and in complete compliance with the regulations, knowing full-well that compliance should not be seen as an obligation, but rather as an opportunity to design a system that's capable of intervening to save lives when required.
The same approach should also be assumed by the installers of safety systems.
In order to ensure a perfectly functioning and certified system for the end user, it is important for the project requirements and specifications to be met throughout the entire supply chain.
The purpose of the presentation was to combine the regulatory and technological evolution aspects with the goal of designing increasingly efficient systems that fully comply with the regulatory requirements.
FIRE EVAC TOUR 2014
14/01 BRESCIA
15/01 PARMA
17/01 LA SPEZIA
21/01 UDINE
22/01 VENICE
05/02 NAPLES
06/02 LECCE
17/02 MODENA
