A.I. S.A.F.E. Installation

Severn Trent Water

Coventry, UK

Brief

Severn Trent Water is a FTSE 100 Index company that employs over 15,000 people and supplies water-based services to over 4.5 million customers.

Health and safety are of paramount importance at Severn Trent Water’s HQ in Coventry so, any system that could benefit the wellbeing of staff would be hugely beneficial. That’s why, following the successful installation of our Bay Monitoring parking solution in its 548 space multi-storey staff car park, Highlight was asked to demonstrate its new AI smoke and fire early warning system S.A.F.E. Following a highly successful live test in the company’s car park, Severn Trent immediately placed an order to have S.A.F.E. installed.

Solution and installation

S.A.F.E was the perfect enhancement to Severn Trent’s existing fire alarm system. S.A.F.E. uses advanced AI technology to detect smoke within seconds, 90 times faster than its current ’fire wire’ system. S.A.F.E. sends an audio and visual alert automatically giving Severn Trent Water vital pre-warning of a potential fire outbreak.

Having previously installed the Highlight Bay Monitoring solution (which includes cameras, back-office PC, cabling and network), there was little additional infrastructure required to implement the S.A.F.E. solution and allow the two systems to run concurrently.

To integrate S.A.F.E with the Bay Monitoring system and enable the AI to cover the entire car park, the Highlight team simply had to fit a number of custom designed hardware devices and install the S.A.F.E. software on the back-office PC. This provided a management console for Severn Trent Water’s car park security team to constantly monitor and react to any alerts the system triggered. An audible alarm and red flashing warning light were also installed in the car park office.

Commissioning the system took just two weeks, including testing all aspects of detection and alert – email, SMS and audio-visual. This allowed the AI to learn the environment it was operating in, as well as ensuring all areas of the car park were being monitored.

Staff were fully trained and established as approved users on the system, giving them the ability to see any event in real time simply by clicking on a link on their device, and take the appropriate action. These users varied according to the time of day – all users during working hours had access and only security staff during the night shift.

Outcome

After the two-week commissioning period, the AI software was operating with complete autonomy, continually scanning all designated areas for any sign of smoke or fire and raising the alarm accordingly.

Since S.A.F.E. runs automatically 24/7, the requirement for manual intervention is minimal beyond monitoring and acting on an alert. This eliminates the need for Severn Trent Water to allocate any dedicated resource to the system.

“Armed with both the S.A.F.E. system and Bay Monitoring system Severn Trent Water now has the very best technology for the safe and efficient running of its staff car park,” states Robert Harrison, Director at Highlight Parking.

Going forwards the Highlight team will be continually testing and monitoring the system to ensure its operational stability, as well as implementing any enhancement updates to further improve performance.

“The S.A.F.E. system was a guaranteed investment for us. We did of course have a fire alarm system in the car park but, S.A.F.E. provides a far quicker response; we timed it at between seven and eight seconds compared to 12 minutes for our existing system.”
Richard Carney, Project Manager at Severn Trent

For more information on S.A.F.E. click here.