Whilst London Road Isleworth is not our most prestigious or largest project it is by far our most important project when considering the development of our company.

Our initial involvement on the scheme was to develop the fire strategy for the building and the detailed design and installation of the necessary life safety smoke control systems with associated detection. The fire strategy enabled the removal of two stairways through the demonstration that extended travel distances were acceptable. FDS employed the latest Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to prove the significant value engineered solution. Following on from this FDS has provided ongoing management advice and system maintenance to ensure the up keep of the systems.

The installation process of the system was carried out on time and with no additional costs to the client. FDS were able to utilise the changes to the system design, that came about through experience of construction site issues on other sites, to commission the system without all the building elements being complete. This therefore removed the risk of delays from the client and enabled them to achieve practical completion inside their project deadline.

The most important fact of this project is however that it has experienced two substantial fires within the building at which time the system came into full effect. FDS provided 24 hour support to the building management and within 8 hours of the fire initiation the system was re-set and re-certified to continue to provide ongoing life safety protection to the occupants of the building without the need to replace a single component aside from one smoke detector head in the common corridor.
Upon discussion with the attending fire officer in charge he commended the systems performance and stated that he would be more than happy to see this type of system in place rather than other forms of venting he has come across. The systems performance was such that no other occupants within the building were affected by the fire even though the original flat of incidence was totally destroyed by the fire.

We feel it is important to highlight the effectiveness and all round improvement to life safety of the FDS smoke venting system in light of the recent well publicised fire in the London area that lead to catastrophic failure and loss of life. It should also be noted that whilst the life safety standards are significantly improved the client was provided with substantial cost savings to the build that were several times higher than the system costs, which gives a very simple case for the inclusion of such systems.