School Paging Systems and Emergency Communications

Posted by David Parish, Ph.D., CEO Calypso Systems
Thursday April 29th, 2010 | 0 Comments

I’ll admit right up front that up until a few months ago, I never heard of the National Fire Protection Association, widely known as NFPA.   The self-described world's leading advocate of fire prevention and an authoritative source on public safety, NFPA develops, publishes, and disseminates more than 300 consensus codes and standards intended to minimize the possibility and effects of fire and other risks.  All well and good, but what’s the NFPA doing in a Calypso blog?  It turns out that the NFPA has quite a lot to say about school paging systems.

By way of background, it’s important to know that Calypso’s school paging system, Conductor, is not just another standard 70v offering.  Conductor takes advantage of the latest streaming audio and network technologies to completely modernize the whole concept of school paging, delivering both greater flexibility and lower costs.  So how does this relate to Fire Safety?

The latest code release by NFPA, called “NFPA 72”, fundamentally redefines the relationship between dedicated fire safety systems and paging systems in three fundamental ways.  First, it calls for honest-to-god “voice intelligibility”, acknowledging that a blaring fire alarm horn is incapable of delivering intelligible voice evacuation instructions.  Pro-audio guys, please take a bow.  Second, the new code demands “interoperability” between dedicated fire safety systems and paging systems.  In other words, when the paging system is engaged to deliver critical emergency communications and instructions, it must have the ability to temporarily suspend the fire alarm, allowing it to resume after instructions have been delivered.  And finally, the code revision calls for prioritizing different types of emergency alarms and communications, acknowledging that that voice evacuation instructions take precedence over the alarm signal.

Make no mistake.  If you’re in the fire alarm business, this is a “rock my world” moment that’s going to change everything about how you go about your business.  And if you’re in the paging business, you have some features and functions to think about.  And Conductor?  Great news.  Without knowing about NFPA 72, we designed the system to accommodate (a) voice intelligibility, (b) universal interoperability and (c) signal priorities.  How about that?

Check out the NFPA web site (www.nfpa.org) and a great new web site sponsored by NSCA on Mass Notification and Emergency Communications (www.mnec.org) for a full run-down on these changes.

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