BMW driven by the highest standards

A Millbank voice alarm and public address solution has been installed at the new Exeter Crown and County Courts building. Located on the outskirts of Exeter City Centre, the new building combines five courtrooms - four criminal and one civil - as well as four District Judges' civil hearing rooms. The split-level structure will also house the Exeter Probate Sub-Registry and the Area Director's office. Millbank provides a secure method of voice reproduction giving greater clarity and penetration to the warning message. Within the five courtrooms themselves, Millbank also provides the audio system and amplification system to ensure, for example, that Judges can be heard in the overhead galleries. The Millbank solution was installed by Chubb Fire. Chubb's Tim Baughan explains: "Thanks to a Programmable Millbank Paging Station, Voice Evacuation zones (of which there are eight) can be swapped to paging zones (of which there are six) at any times and vice versa. The custom Millbank microphone routing console and 'non-error' paging system allows ushers to communicate with witnesses and other visitors and ensures that they only speak to people outside the specific courtroom they are using. Provision is also made for the hard of hearing with the use of Infrared Hearing Induction loops in all waiting areas. The central equipment contains power distribution, standby batteries, charger, Millbank amplifiers, routing, fault scanners and the ME loudspeaker monitoring equipment". Neil Voce, a Director of Millbank explains: "The primary requirement for a Millbank Voice Evacuation system is to broadcast public address or emergency messages to all or selected parts of the building. The Millbank solution allows users to 'page' witnesses and consultations rooms, either across the entire site or to spesific areas. The court environment means that there are always people in and around the courtrooms and different areas of the building, and the announcements can be clearly heard by everyone". Neil concludes “this courtroom system is one of the most complex we have ever had with the combinations of zones and sub-zones. This difficulty is typical of court building projects and requires a lot of careful planning” The installation at Exeter Crown and County Court follows recent Millbank installations at London's Canary Warf and the London Underground. Helge Rognstad marketing manager at Xtralis Pty Ltd explains: "Market research shows that people do not take notice of bells or sounders, wrongly assuming that it is a fire drill or simply 'nothing to do with them'. A pre-recorded voice alarm message however, can communicate the urgency of the situation and gives a clear instruction to the public about what they need to do. This important to ensure a quick evacuation in case of emergency which saves lives as a result. For this reason, we hope that more public buildings will follow Exeter Crown and County Court and install similar voice alarm solutions".

Xtralis | Your Privacy | Terms of use | Contact us