Following a competitive tender, leading European-based fire detection manufacturer Global Fire Equipment (GFE) has designed, supplied and commissioned a new fire alarm system for the Radisson Blu Fujairah, a 5-star resort nestled along 500 metres of private beach in Dibba, Fujairah in the northeast of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). 

Radisson Hotel Group is one of the world’s largest hotel companies with more than 1,400 hotels in its portfolio. Its 257-room Radisson Blu Fujairah luxury resort boasts five outdoor swimming pools, a spa, a health club, meeting rooms, a diving centre, restaurants, bars and a kids’ club.

When the engineering team at Radisson Blu was looking to replace the existing fire alarm system within the resort because of mounting maintenance costs, GFE was appointed to design a system for the hotel’s main building and three further connected buildings, along with a health club, a diving centre, a bar and four villas.

GFE, which also trades under the name of Eurotech in the Middle East, has a well-established reputation in the region having operated there since 2008. As a result, Radisson Blu’s engineering team was already aware of the high quality of GFE’s fire detection solutions. Once GFE had designed the new system, GFE’s agents in the UAE, Najd Electronics & Safety Equipment, undertook the installation, testing and commissioning as they already had the maintenance contract for Radisson Blu Fujairah and two other hotels in the Radisson Hotel Group. 

The chosen 9-loop system for Radisson Blu Fujairah comprises two panels. The first panel has four loops, each of which connects to 110 devices which cover the main four-storey hotel building and two other connected four-storey buildings.

The second panel has five loops, each of which connects to over 100 devices which cover the third connected four-storey building, the external areas of the three-storey health club, the two-storey diving centre, a bar and the four three-storey villas.  In total, the system comprises 780 smoke detectors, ten heat detectors, 40 manual call points (MCPs), 100 input output modules, 50 sounders, two network cards and ten amplifier modules.

Eng. Yaser Ahmed Ouda El Deheny, Director of the engineering department at Radisson Blu Fujairah, comments: “When the maintenance costs associated with our previous fire alarm system kept increasing, we wanted to invest in a cost-effective and modern solution that would meet our requirements. The support we received from GFE and Najd throughout the project was excellent, and we are very impressed with the quality of GFE’s fire detection solutions.”

Kamal A. Hadi, Regional Director Middle East & North Africa (MENA) at GFE, adds: “This was an exciting project to work on and it’s the first time we’ve supplied our equipment to the prestigious Radisson Blu hotel group. One of the biggest challenges we faced during this project was undertaking the installation work in a ‘live’ environment where the hotel remained open to guests throughout the installation and commissioning. To facilitate this, we worked closely with the hotel’s management team to undertake the work one storey at a time, clearing each area of hotel guests while works were underway.”