St. Joseph’s Catholic Primary School is a vibrant and engaging mid-size primary school with 189 pupils in Halifax, West Yorkshire. The school is highly regarded both academically and socially and places an emphasis on the teachings of the Catholic religion. At the heart of the school is a caring and creative learning environment where all students are made to feel safe. St. Joseph’s recently approached D-Tect based in Leeds, to install a lockdown system to be used in the case of an emergency or threat to children and staff.
For this particular site a mixture of internal and external call points and sounder / beacons were used with the Master call point situated in the main school office. Three external sounder / beacons were placed around the playground and entrance with a further seven units sited inside the school. Using a proven, secure mesh protocol, when one ALERTEX unit is activated, it will trigger all units in range to sound an audible alert accompanied by a flashing beacon light.
ALERTEX lockdown units are blue to differentiate them from traditional fire alarms, and, in line with recent Ofsted guidelines which state that a lockdown alarm must be distinctive in sound from a fire alarm, there are 32 sounds to choose from. There is also a voice variant available which will sound a lockdown message which can be customised by the school.
The caretaker at St. Joseph’s was able to advise D-Tect’s engineers of the best positions for the ALERTEX alert points and installation was completed within a few hours.
D-Tect offers a wide variety of security solutions including CCTV installation and monitoring, access control and manned guarding. With over 10 years’ experience within the security industry they are renowned for delivering a high level of service to customers at a competitive price.
Given the high costs involved in wiring a traditional system, both in terms of man-power and installation costs, D-Tect were delighted to be able to offer St. Joseph’s a competitive price for the wireless lockdown system. At the same time they were commissioned to install an internal public address system for the school’s announcements.
Natalie Marshall, Director at D-Tect commented “With the introduction of new Ofsted guidelines many schools and colleges are looking to introduce an efficient lockdown system with minimum disruption to their existing systems already in place. It is in this regard that the ALERTEX lockdown system comes into its own with its unique features. Our campaign offering safety and security checks to schools and colleges within the Yorkshire Region has proved to be a great success, with St Joseph’s being one of our first installations. We have now expanded our coverage to the remainder of the UK, and plan to provide suitable solutions to many more schools and colleges throughout the country.”
ALERTEX units were supplied to D-Tect via QED (Quality Essential Distribution) in Preston who were also on hand to provide technical support.