Network Based Mass Notification Systems for California Buildings

What a network based mass notification system is#

Telelink Business Services is a licensed C-7 Low Voltage Systems Contractor, CSLB License #472017, and we design and install network based mass notification under that classification for offices and tenant improvements, public agency buildings, schools and community colleges, clinics, warehouses and campuses across California.

A network based mass notification system sends one alert to every endpoint on the data network at the same time. The endpoints are IP speakers on PoE switch ports, IP beacons and strobes, LED message displays in corridors and lobbies, full screen messages pushed to computers, and text and push notifications sent to a phone list. The head end is a server or a hosted service that holds the zones, the message templates and the user permissions.

What it does is reach people who are not looking at a screen and not carrying a radio, in the areas where a page would already reach them, and put the same words in text for anyone who cannot hear the announcement. The building’s fire alarm system is a separate listed and permitted life safety system with its own contractor and its own submittal, and the next section covers how the two packages are divided on a project that carries both.

Endpoint	What it delivers	Where it fits
IP speaker	Live voice, recorded message, tone	Corridors, classrooms, offices, lobbies
IP horn or array	Higher output voice and tone outdoors	Parking areas, yards, athletic fields
Beacon or strobe	Visual alert with no audio content	Shops, plant floors, quiet areas
LED message display	Scrolling or fixed text	Lobbies, corridors, gymnasiums
Desktop alerting	Full screen message on computers	Offices, labs, agency floors
Mobile alerting	Text, push and email to a list	Staff off site, night shift, drivers

AtlasIED, Advanced Network Devices, Algo, Valcom and Singlewire are among the platforms commonly specified for this scope on California commercial and institutional projects, and we install to the specification. Where no specification exists we write one with the owner around the zones, the endpoint mix and the systems already in the building.

How the two packages are divided on a California project#

Settle this before anyone budgets the scope.

Our package is the network based system: IP speakers, beacons and message displays on the data network, the head end, the Cat6A drops, the zones, the templates and the commissioning. Where the endpoints are separate devices on the network and the fire alarm system is left alone, all of it is ours on a Division 27 submittal.

A specification that calls for messages through the fire alarm speakers, for the notification system to silence or override fire alarm audio, or for a combined panel doing both jobs, is a C-10 scope on a C-10 submittal carried by the fire alarm contractor of record. We say so at bid time rather than at rough in. Many California projects carry both packages, on separate submittals, with a coordination meeting to agree what happens when both systems have something to say at once, and we sit in that meeting with the C-10 contractor and the fire code official.

Bring the fire code official into that conversation early. The permit and plan review path, and whether the jurisdiction treats any part of the system as fire alarm work, are answers to get in writing during design.

How an alert gets initiated#

An alert is only as fast as the way somebody starts it. Four paths cover most projects, and most sites use more than one.

From a phone. A dial code on a desk phone or a softphone opens a live announcement to a zone or to everyone. This is the path staff use without training, and it depends on the phone system and the notification head end sharing a connection that has been tested from the handsets people sit at.

From a panic input. A duress button under a counter, a lockdown switch in a front office, or a dry contact from another system fires a recorded message to a defined zone. Contact closures work when nobody has a console open and nobody is able to talk.

From a console. A desktop or mobile application shows the zones and the templates. The operator picks a template, picks the zones, confirms, and the alert goes. Rights are set per user, and the confirmation step exists so a mis-click does not put a lockdown message on a campus.

From another system. An interface or an API call from access control, a weather service, a dispatch feed or a building system sends a message without a person. This is where large sites get value and where testing has to be most careful, because an automated trigger fires at three in the morning with nobody standing next to it.

Every path logs the initiator, the time, the zones and the template. That log is the record the owner produces afterward.

Zoning, paging and school bell integration#

Zoning is the design decision that outlives the equipment. Get it wrong and the operator sends everything to everywhere, because the zone list is too hard to use under pressure.

We build zones on three axes. Geographic zones follow building, floor, wing and outdoor area. Functional zones follow who needs the message: front office, shop floor, dining, athletics. Escalation groups combine them so an all call, a building call and a floor call are each one selection. Outdoor areas are always their own zones, because an outdoor message carries past the property line and because the endpoints are different hardware.

The relationship to the everyday systems matters as much as the emergency case. Overhead paging is the same speakers doing routine work: a page to the dock, a shift tone, a background announcement. On a school or community college the bell and intercom system carries the schedule, classroom call-in and all call, and mass notification is the emergency layer over it. Bought together, the endpoints, zones and amplifier capacity are designed once. Bought separately, the building ends up with two speaker systems in the same ceiling and two zone maps that disagree. On K-12 and higher education projects we ask for the bell schedule and the paging zone list before we lay out a single speaker.

Intelligibility, ambient noise and speaker placement#

The design constraint on this scope is not coverage. It is whether the words can be understood where the people are.

Two things work against that. Ambient noise sets the level the message has to clear, and it is measured on site with the equipment running rather than estimated from a floor plan. Reverberation blurs speech in exactly the spaces that need it most: gymnasiums, atria, stairwells, parking structures and warehouses with hard surfaces and long sight lines. Turning the volume up in a reverberant space makes the message louder and harder to understand at the same time.

The design answer is more speakers at lower levels rather than fewer speakers turned up, placed so no listener is far from one and so two distant speakers do not arrive at the same ear out of step. Outdoors, horn arrays are aimed and delayed where the throw is long, and messages are written short and paced slowly because echo eats the ends of words. Recorded messages hold up better than live announcements under stress, because the pacing is already right.

Text carries what audio cannot. Message displays and desktop alerts reach people who are hard of hearing, people in hearing protection, and people behind a closed door. We build every template in both forms.

Network, PoE and head end requirements#

Putting endpoints on the network makes the network part of the notification system, which changes what the IT group has to provide.

Count the PoE budget per switch, not per port. A closet full of speakers and beacons can exceed a switch power supply that looked adequate on paper, and the shortfall shows up the first time everything sounds at once. Put the endpoints on their own VLAN with the multicast configuration the platform needs, and write the firewall rules for a hosted console before commissioning week. Address the endpoints from a reserved range and label them to the same scheme as the rest of the structured cabling.

Power is the item most often missed. A system that runs on PoE stops when the switch stops. If the site expects notification during an outage, the switches, the uplinks and the head end all belong on the UPS and generator path, and that requirement has to reach the electrical scope during design. We show it on the submittal and put the load on the panel schedule request.

Cabling is Cat6A to each endpoint, terminated and certified like a data drop, with exterior pathway sized and sealed for the environment. Endpoints do not go on Wi-Fi.

Templates, drills and the records you keep#

Messages are written before the emergency, reviewed by the people who will send them, and stored as templates with the zones already attached.

A workable template set is small: lockdown, lockdown lift, an evacuation message that does not conflict with the fire alarm sequence, shelter in place, severe weather, all clear, and a test message. Each one names the action rather than the hazard, because the action is what people need in the first five seconds.

Drills produce the evidence. The system logs the initiator, the time, the zones, and which endpoints reported back, and that report is what the owner files. We set the drill schedule at handover, walk the operator through running one, and leave a zone map, an endpoint schedule by room, the head end configuration, the user accounts and rights, and a commissioning test log. Endpoint counts and firmware move over time, so periodic testing belongs under a service and maintenance agreement.

Next step#

Send the floor plans, the zone list you want, the phone and paging systems already in the building, and the fire alarm scope if it is out to bid. Use request a bid to upload drawings and we will return a zoned endpoint count with the electrical, network and C-10 handoffs drawn. General contractors can start at for general contractors for our prequalification packet and Division 27 scope letter.