Mind the Step

The Northern Ticket Hall at London’s King's Cross St. Pancras Underground Station includes 10 new escalators, installed to provide access to the Victoria and Piccadilly Tube lines.

The installation of a fully developed Escalator Water Suppression System (EWSS), a bespoke system from Kentec Electronics Ltd., incorporates the latest developments in linear detection cable. The system is designed to give a greater degree of control over the sprinkler system as it allows sprinkler activation to be more localised, whilst providing a fire safe environment and minimising service disruption from false alarms.

In this latest version of the King's Cross EWSS, Kentec has played a principal role in integrating the Listec linear heat detection interface to an addressable control system for ease of configurability.

This reliable and robust Kentec control system has been used extensively in London Underground stations including Moorgate, Bank, Embankment, Holborn, Bond Street, St Pauls and Shepherds Bush.

It is a reputation that sees Kentec life safety systems installed, for example, as the predominant technology platform on the London Underground system, in Royal Palaces, Parliaments, National Museums and Heritage Sites.

Research and development
At the heart of this reputation is constantly innovative research and development, wholly managed and operated in-house by fire industry specialists adeptly responsive to the demands of global markets, and adaptable to customer feedback that drives the company’s desire to develop and deliver the most effective products.

The company’s Taktis range is an example of this desire to advance the boundaries of fire technology. Defined by the rapid emergence of internet connectivity and its integration to intelligent buildings, the company’s all-new Taktis product range of fire alarm control solutions combines the very latest hardware and software to produce a control and indication system that’s powerful and sophisticated, yet simple to use and understand, with the flexible configurability to realize many essential control and indication applications, with direct integration into intelligent buildings.

It is the fire industry demands for quality and functionality, in addition to meeting the wider market standards in the fire industry that Kentec endeavours to exceed. The company conducts its own in-house, robust, pre-release valuation and validation testing to ensure compliant reliability and safety.  Likewise, the company’s new computerised Intuitive Production Planning System, tailored specifically to customer needs, is achieving giant strides in flow rate, factory planning, quality and product volume, to supply the demand that is continually increasing. A new barcoding system to track the parts and assembly at each manufacturing stage also underpins Kentec’s long-term aims to optimize volume manufacturing and grow the company to achieve wider industry recognition as a key global supplier of fire panels.

Dedicated customer support and training
Having worked closely with national and international customers and end users for 30 years, Kentec has the experience and expertise to develop simple-to-use, easy to set-up fire control panels that save commissioning engineers valuable time and allow end users to have full confidence in the safety systems they have selected.

As part of Kentec’s customer care the company offers sector-leading technical support facilities and a dedicated team of highly trained personnel providing direct telephone assistance; this is backed up by regular technical e-mail bulletins. Kentec also has a team of dedicated trainers who provide customers with product training both onsite and offsite, UK and overseas. The success of this customer care programme can be measured by the recent addition of new training facilities to cater for greater customer demand.