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Fire safety in the bag for shoppers at new Plovdiv mall

Fire safety in the bag for shoppers at new Plovdiv mall

22 Jun 2017

A new shopping complex in the city of Plovdiv, Bulgaria, is benefitting from a range of innovative life safety solutions produced by leading manufacturer, Hochiki Europe.

A much-anticipated addition to Plovdiv, the 60,000m2 Markovo Tepe Mall has taken more than eight years to complete. As well as creating a convenient destination for shopping, leisure and dining in Bulgaria’s second largest city, the development has generated over 500 jobs for residents, boosting the local economy.

Shopping centres like Markovo Tepe Mall attract high volumes of people on a daily basis, not all of whom are familiar with the layout of the stores, pedestrian walkways, entrances and exits or public spaces. This presents building owners and facilities managers with challenges in terms of life safety.

To ensure the wellbeing of staff and shoppers alike, Markove Tepe Mall required an addressable life safety system that would allow duty holders to locate and draw attention to emergency incidents as quickly as possible. An increased number of detectors were also needed across the eight-storey site to ensure any potential risks could be effectively monitored.

Reliable and easy to install

Security system specifier, Sectron Ltd, chose to install a selection of Hochiki Europe solutions which would address the challenges posed by such a large shopping centre. Having worked with the life safety system manufacturer for a number of years, Sectron Ltd was assured of the performance of Hochiki Europe’s systems, which are easy to install and offer full compliance to European building standards.

The project saw the installation of products from Hochiki Europe’s ESP range of intelligent devices, which all utilise the world-proven Enhanced Systems Protocol (ESP). The ESP product range offers high compliance to globally recognised safety standards whilst the open protocol gives installers the flexibility to incorporate devices from multiple manufacturers.

Optical smoke and thermal detectors, beam detectors and sounders compatible with ESP were installed as part of the project. Combined strobe and sounder beacons were also added to make sure building users are instantly notified to any safety issues within the complex.

The common areas of the Markove Tepe Mall and the majority of individual stores have been fitted with Hochiki Europe products. In total, more than 1,300 detectors were installed throughout the shopping mall.

Safeguarding shoppers with intelligent systems

Speaking about the project, Vladimir Vasilev, project manager for First Facility Bulgaria EOOD commented: “Ensuring high standards of safety for shoppers and staff is of paramount importance. To achieve this, we needed a dependable and flexible fire detection system that would identify hazards at the earliest opportunity. By using Hochiki Europe’s intelligent and addressable products, we can immediately identify any threats and notify building users.”

Georgi Kolev, product manager for fire protection and suppression systems at Sectron Ltd. added: “We’ve been using Hochiki Europe’s systems for more than 20 years. Not only are the company’s solutions highly reliable, they also offer superior networking capability. Because of this, we were able to easily network these products with the Kentec control panels used on this project.”

Petia Simeonova, Hochiki Europe’s Central/Eastern European sales manager said: “Hochiki Europe has a wide range of addressable products and systems designed specifically to suit complex shopping environments like the Markovo Tepe Mall. Our ESP range offers unparalleled reliability for users in terms of performance and durability. We’re happy to have played a role in protecting this new venue for the local community in Plovdiv.”

To find out more about Hochiki Europe’s extensive product range, visit: www.hochikieurope.com.