If indeed “nothing is certain in life except death and taxes,” the corollary is: “It is essential to protect taxes and the people who collect them.”

That's the goal of a fire alarm system recently upgraded at the Internal Revenue Service Building in Farmers Branch, Texas. The 322,000-square-foot facility, built in 1984, is staffed with 1,100 employees.

The General Services Administration (GSA), which ultimately would purchase the new system, turned to Carl Ball, president of Fire Systems Design, a NESCO affiliate located in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Ball recommended the AM2020 by Notifier, Northford, Conn., as the foundation of the upgrade.

Ball also recommended Notifier's XPIQ Quad Intelligent Audio Transponder, an advanced voice evacuation system, accompanied by fire fighter phones, FCPS remote power supplies for visual alarms (strobes), addressable devices, detectors, and pull stations.

The XPIQ is a multi-channel distributed audio amplification subsystem, remotely controlled by a fire alarm control panel through a signaling line circuit. By using a software program and internal switching capabilities, the XPIQ eliminates the need for relays and complex wiring during installation, and it is compatible with the company's line of voice evacuation intelligent fire alarm panels (in this case, the existing Notifier 2020). As a result, the XPIQ handles all the switching easily with less wiring.

To Betty Doss, senior support service specialist and the IRS Building's on-site facility manager, minimal wiring is an advantage.

“Because each floor has an individual transponder, there are very few cables,” she said. “Thus, there were fewer wires to be pulled through the entire building, which obviously means less potential damage to the building's infrastructure.”

XPIQ's multi-channel audio system is capable of playing up to four different audio messages simultaneously. Other features include four amplifier slots; up to four continuously supervised 25-watt amplifiers; two user-configurable tone generators either for riser back-up or as a main tone source; four Class B or two Class A firefighter telephone zones capable of distinguishing open, short and off-hook states; ground fault detection; and a serial port for configuration download from a laptop. The amplifiers can be configured so that one of the four can act as a redundant backup for the other three.

Being addressable means that the system is taking preventative measures by informing the user of sensitivity levels on an individual detector basis. It also means that the exact location of trouble can be identified.

“The system can point out the exact device that is in ‘trouble’ so that it is easily found,” said facility director Fred Oeltjendiers. “Traditional systems can point out the zone where the trouble is located, but not the exact location. The time savings, which may be only a matter of seconds, can make all the difference in a life-threatening emergency.”

In addition, occupants of the building can hear and see alarms, thanks to the voice messages and strobe lights. The previous system was limited in that it was not audible throughout the building. Now, for example, if there is an emergency on floor five of the 15-floor building, people on floors 1-4 and 6-15 will also be informed of the event.

“The IRS needed a system that would be flexible enough to grow with the building, to meet code changes and upgrades,” said Ball. “The system has built-in spare capacity and can be upgraded to the latest NFS-3030 product.”

Besides the fire protection and alarm, the new system also offers capabilities for other emergency warnings, such as weather warnings. A tornado warning, for example, will send people to a designated area. Plus, the system can offer two separate channels of voice; consequently, it can relay two different messages.