City and County of Swansea have installed the radio based emergency voice communication Refuge Alerter® system in the Civic Centre. This is one of the City and County of Swansea’s main office blocks and is located at the Swansea Bay waterfront. The building complex houses a public cafe, the central library for Swansea, an exhibition space, the West Glamorgan Archive Service and a contact centre for the council.

The Refuge Alerter® RA1000 was installed as part of a major redevelopment to make the Civic Centre a new central hub for the city. With an estimated 2,000 visitors each day, making facilities fully accessible to everyone was not only essential but obligatory by law and fundamental consideration was given to emergency evacuation planning – egress.

Planning for a fire or an emergency evacuation is about planning for exceptional circumstances. As members of the public are able to access the first two floors of the building, safe waiting areas know as ‘refuge’ have been put in place.

A reliable and safe form of communication needed to be implemented in these refuge areas, to ensure managed evacuations can be performed with speed and accuracy by the rescue team and offer those waiting to be rescued the assurance of knowing assistance is on its way.

Due to the buildings structure and layout it was evident that a hard wired communication system could prove quite disruptive to the refurbishment plans.  Deaf Alerter plc have worked in the radio communications industry for 15 years and have developed an alternative to hard wired solutions. Sales Manager, Chris Haseldine commented: “when I visited the Civic Centre it was apparent that Refuge Alerter® would be ideal. It proved cost effective and the ease of installation meant that the system was in place and fully functional in time for the grand opening in March”.