SDUPD - National City Marine Terminal Fire Alarm System Upgrade
SDUPD - National City Marine Terminal Fire Alarm System Upgrade
Client: Unified Port of San Diego
Location: San Diego, CA
The Unified Port of San Diego engaged Lopez Engineering, Inc. (LEI) to upgrade the Fire Alarm (FA) system at National City Marine Terminal. The new FA system was coordinated with the National City Fire Marshall (NCFM) incorporating signaling systems requested by the NCFM. The Fire Alarm system was able to have down time with around the clock watch of affected areas. Communication with National City Marine Terminal Tenants was critical both during design and construction as were accurate as-built drawings. Extensive field work was conducted to accurately identify the existing FA systems. As a part of design, the final drawings were used to perform an extensive walk through to assure constructability. After construction was complete, LEI participated with the Unified Port of San Diego and the Contractor to commission the Fire Alarm system.
The Unified Port of San Diego provided site plans including underground conduit routing. These were used as a base for LEI to create accurate as-builts of the existing FA system. Field work served as a basis for cable routing and single line drawings of the Fire Alarm systems. These, in turn, enabled the development of demolition and installation drawings.
Existing FA systems in each building and throughout the site were removed and a new addressable FA system installed with several FACPs installed in buildings for protection from the weather. The removed Fire Alarm (FA) system utilized the telephone cable system whereas the new FA System used fiber optic cable looped between the buildings containing stand-alone Fire Alarm Control Panels (FACP) that communicate with each other and with the main FACP at the main Guard Shack. This allows any one cable to be cut and the FA system to continue working with each FACP continually communicating with the other FACPs. The FA System in each building was replaced with an addressable FA system utilizing addressable FA devices.