With around 40 individual
buildings housing over
160,000m2 of prime
office space, Cobalt Business Park,
which is located a short drive from
central Newcastle, is one of the
largest complexes of its kind in the
UK.

To give those working on-site the
highest levels of protection its
owner, Highbridge Properties, has
insisted that each of the buildings
has a state-of-the-art fire detection
system as part of an overall building
services infrastructure.

ARC365 is one of the north-east
of England’s leading life safety
installation specialists and has
enjoyed a long-term relationship
with Cobalt Business Park. Chris
Harris, director of ARC365, explains:
“We were invited to tender for the
fire detection installation in the first
building. Our proposal centred on
the installation of a Hochiki Europe
fire detection system. We won the
contract and since then we have been
asked to carry out similar work for
all but three buildings on the site.’
All of the systems installed at
Cobalt Business Park are analogue
addressable and most of them use
Hochiki Europe’s Enhanced Systems
Protocol (ESP).

Stuart Davies, marketing manager,
explains: “ESP is a resilient total
communications solution for
intelligent fire detection and fully
integrated systems. It has a multipurpose
structure that provides the
flexibility and expansion to
accommodate simple addressable
systems through to integrated
building management and safety
systems.’
The buildings’ fire detection
systems are compliant to BS 5839
category L1 standard, which means
that automatic detectors are
deployed in all areas, including roof
spaces and voids to give an early
warning of fire.