Philip Witts – COO of ATEIS Middle East, talks about the evolving landscape of fire safety, showcasing how ATEIS leads with innovation and regional expertise

Can you introduce ATEIS and VELOX and give a short overview of the key milestones that led to your current position in the fire safety industry?

Ateis Middle East are manufacturers of life safety & audio products, focussing on PAVA, PA, IP – PA, loudspeakers and pro-audio solutions. Velox is our fire alarm brand which we proudly manufacture in our facilities in Dubai and Canada. Ateis originated in France over 40 years ago, with the Middle East operation starting 17 years ago.

We have been successful in supply our systems to some of the landmark projects in the Middle East, including the Burj Al Arab, Dubai Metro, Mall of the Emirates, King Khaled International Airport in Riyadh, Sports City in Cairo and many more. Our Velox fire detection products are now sold in nearly 40 countries and our diverse ranges cover from a single villa to huge mega projects such as  the multiple Malls we have completed, some with in excess of 20,000 devices.

What are the core products and services offered by ATEIS and VELOX?

Ateis have multiple ranges of fire alarm and PAVA solutions with class-leading specifications. On the audio side, we specialize in ‘Pro-Audio PAVA’, meaning that we provide life safety voice evacuation messaging through high specification speakers that can be used to play beautiful sounding music, as well as being approved to international life safety standards for emergency messages.

Our pro audio products can deliver amazing PA and Music performance (including live performances) in any sized venue including stadiums and nightclubs. The Velox fire alarm products offer powerful networking, advanced detector technology and installer friendly hardware & software making it the favourite choice for installations of all sizes.

How do you  stay ahead in terms of innovation and technology in fire safety solutions?

Our in-house R&D department blends local requirements with international standards to develop products suitable for even the most demanding of environments. We are constantly looking to innovate, within the acceptable life safety standards to introduce safer, faster and more intelligent features.

How have you tailored its strategies and products to meet the specific needs of the Middle East?

We have vast experience of the requirements and challenges of the Middle East region. We pioneered and delivered the first fire alarm control panel, approved to EN54 with a built-in 4G/TCPIP communicator to report to our own monitoring cloud without the need for additional ATE (Alarm Transmission Equipment) which subsequently was adopted for use in villas across the UAE.

We invented the ‘BAKHOOR’ feature for our control panels, which, through a simple to operate user interface, will temporarily adjust the sensitivity of the systems to allow the burning of Bakhoor (Incense) or smoking of Shisha in the building, without triggering an alarm.  This feature has a built-in countdown timer to ensure that the system returns to a normal state after a selected period (maximum of 15 minutes). This password-protected feature delivers a system that can be trusted to alarm only in a real fire situation.

One further ‘region-centric’ patented feature, is the ‘double dust trap’ design of our smoke detectors. This innovation makes it almost impossible for dust to enter the detector chamber, particularly useful in a dusty/sandy environment. If the chamber remains clean, then the lifetime of the detector gets extended substantially. The intelligent devices do have drift compensation to keep the sensitivity constant if some dust does enter, so this, couple with the double dust trap means years more trouble-free use.

What are your key strategies for maintaining high standards in your products and services?

We pride ourselves on our QAQC department and their impartial role in assessing our processes and activities. We constantly strive for improvement in all areas of the business and are so confident in our high quality and reliability that we offer a 10 year warranty on our Velox Fire Alarm solutions.

Would you like to highlight any new or upcoming products that you are excited about?

The new Ateis ‘Boutique’ range of PAVA controllers and amplifiers brings high-end features to a more budget conscious solution. Powerful enough to cover most requirements, Boutique will be a major contender in commercial projects going forward and now it is Civil Defence approved we can officially launch here in the UAE. Our Fire Alarm range is always being innovated and we have some exciting new features to be launched in 2024 including our Earth Fault detection locator and quick-learn automated loop initialisation to speed-up the commissioning process.

What motivated ATEIS and VELOX to sponsor the IFSJ Leaders in Fire and Safety Conference 2024?

We attended the conference in 2023 as delegates and it was evident that the majority-of the senior personnel associated with our industry were not only in-attendance, but also agreed that the content of the day was first class. As leaders in Fire Safety ourselves, we knew we should support the event in 2024.

The IFSJ Leaders in Fire & Safety Conference 2024 returns on 9 May – visit the official website here.

This article was originally published in the April 2024 issue of International Fire & Safety Journal. To read your FREE digital copy, click here.