Located in Central Birmingham, the West Midlands Police Headquarters at Lloyd House is an impressive sight. Built over 12 storeys, with an extensive wing reaching back over one hundred metres, it stands toe to toe with the dominating modern architecture of Birmingham’s business district. West. Midlands Police has a number of deaf and hard of hearing employees working within these offices.
Years before they had instituted a self select paging based solution to provide fire alarm warning for their staff. They had quickly found that the system had severe limitations, including a lack of power output, limited safety systems and limited message details. When West Midlands Police upgraded their alarms to include a comprehensive fire and emergency announcement system, they decided to also upgrade the complete warning system for their deaf staff.
After reviewing the market, West Midlands Police chose DeafWatch as their preferred solution. Due to the DeafWatch maximum power output of 5W and superb ‘fit for purpose’ frequency, we were able to provide complete coverage of the building with only one watt of power output. To make things even simpler, we achieved this from the ground floor adjacent to the fire alarm panel. The legacy system needed to be installed on the 6th floor to even attempt coverage. As a special requirement, Wireless Alert Solutions also provided a series of emergency alert messages ensuring both safety and equality for their deaf and hard of hearing staff.
“We’ve been really very pleased with the DeafWatch system. Our many deaf and hard of hearing staff have said how pleased they are with the system and the upgrade that we did. We take security and safety at West Midlands Police very seriously and I am delighted with both the solution and the high quality of service we have received from Wireless Alert Solutions. I’d recommend their products and Wireless Alert Solutions as a company to work with.”
Chris Willetts, Facilities Manager, West Midlands Police.
