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The
Vipond Systems Group Engineering Department is comprised
of three Professional Engineers and three designers/draftsmen,
with a combined Fire Protection and Security experience of
over sixty years.
Vipond Systems Group was awarded
the Integrated Security Systems at two of Ontario's new Superjails.
What are Superjails?
Many of the jails in Ontario are antiquated,
some going back to the early 1800s. They are poorly designed
and expensive to maintain. The old prisons weren't designed
to hold as many people as they do. They are multilevel places
with staircases, huge concrete and limestone columns that
block sightlines, alcoves and passageways where you need two
or more officers to transfer a prisoner. These buildings are
damp, impossible to keep in a sanitary state and have poor
heating. At $124 a day per prisoner (over $45,000 per prisoner
per year!), Ontario's prison system has one of the highest
per diem costs in Canada. Super jails are supposed to help
lower this cost down to the $65 a day ($24,000 per year) range.
Under Phase I of a major restructuring of the provincial jail
system, the superjails will replace 18 jails in Southern Ontario
(including Barrie, Cobourg, Peterborough, Lindsay, Parry Sound
as well as Toronto's Don Jail).
The Answer
Superjails are developed in a modular, pod
concept. Each Housing Unit is an octagon, consisting of 6
wings of 96 cells (192 beds) each, which provides clear sightlines
for every inmate occupied area of the institution from a central
Control Room. Fewer guards are required to provide supervision.
Food and laundry services are contracted offsite. In making
more efficient buildings, inmates are living in facilities
that are cleaner, more brightly lit and more comfortable than
what many of them have been used to living in.
Vipond Systems Group is responsible
for the Integrated Security Systems, which includes the following
systems: Central Control and Alarm Reporting, Locking Door
Control, Watchtour, Passive Duress, Active Duress, Touchscreen
Control, Surveillance (Interior) CCTV, Assessment (Exterior)
CCTV, Perimeter Fence Microphonic Detection, Volumetric Rooftop
Detection, Metal Detection and X-Ray Screening, Scamblepad
Keypad Access, Television/AM/FM Signal Distribution, Public
Address, Intercom, Fire Alarm and Nurse Call.
Lindsay Correction Facility
Lindsay is a new 1200 bed facility, with six Men's Housing,
one Women's Housing, Administration, Central Control, Admission
& Discharge, Medical, Segregation Warehouse and Industries
Units
Ottawa-Carleton is a retrofit 200 bed facility, with one Men's
Housing Unit, as well as Administration, Central Control,
Admission & Discharge, Medical and Segregation Units.
 Case
Study - Project Title: Sunnyside Long Term Care Facility
Location: Kitchener Ontario
Owner: Province of Ontario
Project Description: Full integration of an
Hill-Rom tone visual nurse call system (800 points with pocket
paging), 55 card reader security system (AXIOM III), patient
wandering system, CCTV, intercom, assistive listening and
time and attendance.
Each patient wandering door carries a wiegand interface which
is connected to the card access system thereby allowing full
reporting and full door control to be handled by the access
control system. The system's computer is then interfaced to
the Hill-Rom computer via RS232 which allows all patient wandering
alarms, door alarms, reader alarms, or anything connected
to the access control system to annunciate on the Hill-Rom system
controller and page information to the respective pocket pagers
through the Hill-Rom paging base.
The fire alarm is also interfaced to the Hill-Rom nurse call
system whereby resident room smoke alarms will be paged out
to staff members. The Hill-Rom system will also be integrated
to a Spectra Link wireless telephone package.
The video system is part of a digital recorder and connected
to the facility's local area network. This in turn works in
conjunction with the intercom system where the intercom is
connected to the phone system and anyone getting a call from
the front or receiving doors can go to any computer on the
network and view their respective cameras and allow or deny
access as the need arises.
 CASE
STUDY - PROJECT: Toronto Hospital, Western Division
399 Bathurst Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
TASK: Provide Fire Alarm System for
Hospital Complex consisting of eight (8) buildings.
CHALLENGE: Complete replacement of
antiquated fire alarm system without disturbing the hospital
operation and maintaining complete Fire Alarm coverage for
the complex.
SOLUTION: Notifier Network using AM2020
Control Panels and addressable fire alarm devices with an
Integrated Voice Evacuation System
EQUIPMENT
 6
Notifier AM2020 Panels
2 Central Alarm and Control facility
(CACF)
3 Network Annuncitors
2 Network Control Stations (NCS)
2 Printers
30 Nurse's Station Annunciators
1 Switchboard Paging station
2500 Addressable Smoke Detectors
500 Monitoring Points
1000 Speakers
Project: WorldCom Canada
Ltd., Datasite
Challenge: Provide fire protection for
a multi million dollar facility that would meet code requirements
and satisfy the customers needs. Maintaining uninterrupted
operations was of paramount importance to this customer, so
protecting the facility from fire would be useless if there
was residual damage incurred to their equipment.
Solution: Our proposal included for
a 6000lb. FIKE FM200® clean agent fire suppression system
servicing three zones. This system offered exactly what the
customer was looking for; a fire suppression system that would
put out a fire and yet not damage his high value equipment.
In addition, the building code required the area to be sprinklered,
so four double-interlock pre-action systems were installed.
Both systems were controlled by a fully addressable detection
system providing smoke detectors at the ceiling and in the
sub-floor. The system is currently in full operation today
much to the customer's satisfaction.
Project: Ryerson Polytechnical
University, Chemical Room
Challenge: Replace an existing carbon
dioxide with a fire suppression system that would be people
friendly. The Chemical room housed many flammable liquids,
such as, methanol, ethanol and acetone that were readily used
in the chemistry laboratory. Professors and assistants would
enter the room frequently and dispense quantities for use
in the lab. The school wanted to protect this highly flammable
room from fire and at the same time protect its people.
Solution: At first we, because
we'd had so much success with FM200®, we tried it but
found that due to certain flammable liquids the concentration
would have to be raised from 7.0% to 11.0%. Putting the concentration
within the room above FM200® LOAEL value of 10.5%. Enter
FE-13, a clean agent by Dupont and distributed by KIDDE, this
agent was a perfect fit. The extinguishing concentration still
had to be raised from 18.0% to 24.5%, but the LOAEL for this
agent is 50%. It was the ideal choice, no other agent on the
market has a larger safety margin. FE-13 addressed the fire
protection needs of the school and would not create a harmful
environment to the employees.
Project: Husky Injection
Molding
Challenge: Provide fire protection for
two gun drilling milling machines. The hazard involved a very
expensive milling machine that was lubricated by a flammable
lube oil and because of the nature of the process the lube
oil covered all surfaces in the enclosure.
Solution: A carbon dioxide system is
very common in industrial applications involving machinery.
However the enclosure around the hazard did not extend to
the floor, in fact it left a 6" high opening at the floor
level making it impossible to maintain sufficient CO2 concentration
to extinguish a fire. We proposed a water mist hi-fog system
by Marioff because it was not bound by the same constraints
which eliminated CO2 as an option. The Marioff system, developed
in Finland originally for the shipping industry, has recently
obtained Factory Mutual approval for machinery spaces. Totally
self contained it utilizes a nitrogen cylinder to atomize
a supply of water that travels through a piping network to
discharge nozzles. The discharge can be best explained as
creating a very humid atmosphere that withdraws heat from
the fire at such a rate that the fire simply goes out.
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Lindsay
Superjail