Fire Protection: C-Tec Relocates to New Premises

Leading life-safety equipment manufacturer, C-Tec, has celebrated its 30th Anniversary by ­relocating to a magnificent new factory. ­Situated at the heart of Wigan's Challenge Way commercial district in the UK, C-Tec 's state-of-the-art facility measures an impressive 75,000 sq ft (the size of three football pitches) and has been purposely equipped to set the stage for the next phase of the company's development.

The ground floor houses modern manufacturing, meeting, training and storage areas whilst the first floor is dedicated to office space. A custom-built glass staircase, clearly visible from the outside of the factory, links the two floors. A huge backlit C-Tec logo illuminates the spacious marble-tiled reception area and the external entrance to the building.

As one would expect, C-Tec's life-safety innovations feature prominently throughout the building. A powerful 4-loop ZFP touch-screen controlled analogue addressable fire panel links to over 200 C-Tec-manufactured loop sounder beacons and Apollo devices distributed around the site. The panel presents clear and constant feedback on all aspects of fire alarm activity via an intuitive touch-screen. A Quantec addressable call system provides alarm facilities in the marble-tiled disabled persons' toilets and also functions as a panic attack/door monitoring system in certain areas of the building so staff can sound an alarm should they encounter an intruder.

Enough Space for Training and Education
A significant amount of space has been dedicated to training rooms. Over 500 engineers were trained on C-Tec products last year and the company is renowned in the industry for its hands-on free-of-charge courses. Said Andy Green, C-Tec's Marketing Manager: "Our training sessions undoubtedly encourage customers to start installing our products and, as such, we have invested heavily in training facilities. The three new training rooms have been designed to facilitate many different types of product training to suit the various new product lines C-Tec will be introducing over the coming months." Each room contains working demonstration boards of C-Tec's fire alarm control panels, call systems, power supplies and disabled refuge products. One-to-one training and product presentations are carried out in the meeting rooms adjacent to the training rooms. Two PDA200E induction loop amplifiers have been installed in each room to ensure that the sessions are accessible to the hard of hearing.

State-o-the-art Safety and Security ­Installations
With regards to external security, a high-tech CCTV/speaker system has been installed to assist the security guards who patrol the building and its grounds. A series of C-Tec's EN54-compliant power supplies control the internal security doors.

Current Building Regulations insist that all non-domestic buildings with more than one storey provide ‘refuge' areas and a SigTel disabled refuge/emergency voice communication system has been installed to enable two-way communication between rescue teams and disabled people waiting in the refuge areas should an emergency situation arise.

One of SigNet's Integrity Voice Alarm systems has been connected to the ZFP fire alarm system, and will broadcast alert messages in the event of an emergency. The system also connects to the telephone system to allow members of staff to page individual messages throughout the building from their telephones. In addition, Integrity stores a wide range of pre-recorded building-specific messages to help facilitate the smooth operation of the building. For example, staff in the collection area will be notified that a caller is waiting as soon as the button outside is pressed.

Said Andrew Foster, C-Tec's Managing Director: "Our magnificent new factory marks the beginning of a new era for C-Tec as we build on the successes of the last 30 years of manufacturing world-class life-safety equipment to venture into very exciting and previously uncharted territory. We intend to launch some highly innovative new product ranges which will dramatically enhance our status as one of the leading manufacturers of fire detection equipment. These are very exciting times indeed."

C-Tec's extensive range of fire alarm control panels, call systems, voice alarms and disability products, many of which are third-party approved, are currently protecting and improving the lives of thousands of people worldwide. The thriving business has been officially nominated as one of the UK's outstanding examples of manufacturing excellence in the Government's prestigious ‘Made by Britain' initiative and its innovative Hush Button Fire Alarm Solution has also been hailed a remarkable success.