Take a look at the projects we’ve done for other satisfied customers!
For Immediate Press Release – dateline January 2009
Radius Technologies, LLC of Wilmington Delaware receives the 2008 Excellence in Construction Award from the ABC of Delaware.
With a fire alarm system that was reaching the end of its lifecycle, and with a heightened awareness for the security and protection of students, teachers, guests, and facilities, a local private school turned to Radius Technologies of Wilmington Delaware to explore all available options. Radius Technologies worked closely with the customer to find an effective solution that would minimize their costs, fully satisfy their current needs, and provide an easily expandable system that would facilitate and minimize the cost of future improvements to other campus buildings and facilities. The Associated Builders & Contractors of Delaware recognized Radius Technologies’ achievement with its highest honor, the 2008 Excellence in Construction Award.
Working with two key vendors, Radius Technologies was able to deliver a solution that provided significant cost advantages which enabled the school to consider several additional improvements to their overall fire, security, life safety and communications systems.
A New Fire Panel – Replacing old fire panels typically involves pulling brand new wiring throughout the facility. While this is generally not a problem with new construction, it presents significant challenges and additional costs when contemplating a retro–fit project in an existing building. Radius Technologies suggested the use of an industry–unique line of analog/addressable fire control panels that are specially certified for use with existing wiring. The use of existing wiring amounted to approximately $30,000 in savings on labor and materials for the customer.
Those savings enabled the school to contemplate several additional enhancements brought to the table by Radius Technologies. After a careful review of the current state of the life–safety systems at the school, Radius Technologies identified and presented three enhancement opportunities for their customer’s consideration that would a) improve their internal voice evacuation system, b) allow them to be an early adopter of an emerging life–safety practice, and c) position them on the leading edge of technology with a web–based mass–notification system that would greatly enhance the safety of their students and faculty and provide significant peace of mind for parents.
A Voice Evacuation System – The first enhancement was an opportunity to upgrade the school’s voice evacuation system. The current communication systems could only communicate to one class room at a time and only from the main office using a telephone handset. The solution Radius Technologies presented was the first to be used in the region. This system would provide the ability to communicate quickly throughout the entire building. At the simple push of a button, the system can deliver up to eight pre–recorded messages or allow for manual delivery of a spoken message through the phone at the main panel or at any number of multiple remote phone stations. For future expansion, this system can wirelessly connect to and communicate with other buildings on the campus.
An Emerging Life Safety Practice – Amber Lights – The second enhancement offered by Radius Technologies was to consider the use of amber lights. Since new fire strobes were required per the fire code, we suggested the installation of a speaker/strobe/amber light combination device. Most people are aware that they should exit the building using the nearest fire exit when bright, white fire strobes start flashing. However, there may be “situations” where it is necessary to alert the entire school of a pending emergency or occurrence that does not require an evacuation. The amber lights can be used, for example, to silently alert teachers and students that caution is required, stay in the classrooms, lock the doors, and await further instruction. The “amber light protocol” can be useful when certain suspicious or violent activities are thought to be occurring somewhere in the school, on the campus, or in the surrounding neighborhood. Radius Technologies pointed out the cost savings opportunity from simply pulling one more wire for the amber lights at the same time they would be running the new wire for the required speaker/strobe combinations, and by simply installing the speaker/strobe/amber light combo device instead of just the speaker/strobe device. This would cost very little if anything for additional labor, leaving only the extra cost for the one extra wire and the combo amber devices.
New Technology – A Web–based Mass Notification System – The third enhancement offered by Radius Technologies has delighted both the school’s staff and parents alike. This would be the first system of its kind in Delaware and one of only a few on the whole eastern seaboard. It was a fully redundant, web–based system that enables communications to be sent to parent’s cell phones, email, or other communication devices. This advanced communication solution is used by many leading colleges, state, and federal government agencies and can send more than 18,000 messages per minute to any device. It provides the ability for powerful, two–way communication capabilities to quickly send alerts to students, parents, faculty, alumni or public safety officials. It can communicate emergency situations at the school, notify the students or parents of suspicious local activities or predators, and can even be tied in with automatic feeds from local and regional weather advisories, traffic updates, and local and national news bulletins. And since these communications travel over the cell phone channels with “emergency push” priority, the messages sent to recipients will get through even when local disasters or national emergencies such as Hurricane Katrina or 9/11 saturate local voice communications networks.
The mass notification system is fully customizable and can be used to send general messages to everyone registered on the system or unique messages to a targeted population that meet a certain criteria, profile or characteristic. For example, the swim team coach can send a message to notify only parents with kids on the swim team that practice has been cancelled. School administrators can send a message to all parents, authorized relatives or babysitters to alert them of an early dismissal due to bad weather. Even more powerful, once a message is sent, recipients also have the capability to respond to the message by texting back from a cell phone, email, or PDA providing vital and possibly lifesaving feedback.
This project, with all its unique solutions, cost savings, and the use of the newest in technological advances brought the recognition of the entire Delaware construction industry to focus on the achievements of Radius Technologies. Radius Technologies was honored for its achievements at a dinner and reception of over 700 industry professionals sponsored by the Delaware chapter of the Association of Builders and Contractors at the Chase Riverfront Convention Center in December 2008.
For Immediate Press Release – dateline December 2007
Radius Technologies Takes on Major Renovation of Fire Alarm System Twenty–seven Story Building in Downtown Wilmington Delaware.
Radius Technologies was asked to retrofit the entire fire alarm system in the Chase Bank Building in downtown Wilmington, DE. This project consisted of replacing the main fire panel, remote monitoring station and 1,000’s individual detection devices on twenty–seven floors, a penthouse suite, and four underground parking levels. With the building full of rent–paying tenants comprised of lawyers, accountants, investment bankers and other professionals, the challenge for Radius Technologies during this nine month project was to demo the old system and install the new system, ensuring uninterrupted fire alarm protection and with little or no interruption to the daily lives and businesses of the tenants. And. . .to do so at a competitive price.
Working closely with the local fire marshal and the property owners, Radius Technologies was able to achieve this feat by supplying a unique, fully–addressable, digital/analogue fire panel. With this unique equipment, careful project planning, and close coordination with the property managers, Radius Technologies was able to successfully complete this project. Our approach allowed for significant cost savings from the use of existing wiring, while providing a fully parallel system for cutover during the entire demo and installation process.