Luxury shopping is blown away by state-of-the-art fire protection

Customers at Europe’s biggest inner-city retail centre are being treated to five-star fire protection as well as luxurious designer shopping and first-class leisure facilities. The brand new £1.7bn Westfield London shopping mall in Shepherd’s Bush, west London, has been kitted out with cutting edge products from leading ventilation and fire control expert Smoke Control Services (SCS).

Westfield London opened at the end of last month. Part of the capital’s White City district, the construction is 150,000sq m in size and comprises 255 stores, including high-end retailers Louis Vuitton, Mulberry and Tiffany & Co.

SCS’s state-of-the art systems will protect the estimated 21 million customers that are expected to walk through the centre’s doors each year. The firm installed 22 of its uniVent Smoke Shaft systems into the stair cores of the building in only three weeks to ensure the centre was able to open on time.

UniVent is a complete solution for protected lobby ventilation, containing all component parts and controls. The modular system, which has Local Authority Building Control type approval, employs natural smoke ventilation methods to clear smoke from common escape routes and enable people to exit buildings safely in the event of a fire.

There are over 50,000 fires in the UK every year and more than 300 fatalities, the majority of which are caused by the effects of smoke. SCS supplies leading contractors with one-stop-shop smoke control and ventilation solutions designed to protect life and property. Its solutions are used in multi-storey residential, commercial and retail developments across the UK including many hundreds of apartment buildings, the London Transport Museum and Wandsworth South Side Centre.

SCS’s lucrative £400,000 contract with Meica Services, working for Westfield London, comes just months after the business was named ‘Fire Safety Specialist of the Year’ in the national Construction Specialist Awards.

Managing Director of SCS Allan Meek said: “Our systems have been installed in thousands of buildings nationwide but the opportunity to work on such a prestigious project is a real coup for us and consolidates our position as respected suppliers to the retail sector. Our UniVent range is proving increasingly popular with customers who are attracted by the fact that it is a fast, complete, simple and cost effective solution suitable for a wide range of purposes.”

Keith Whitmore, Director of Construction at Westfield, said: “We develop innovative retail concepts which keep our centres at the forefront of international trends, and the safety of our customers is always paramount. We were pleased to work with SCS to install a smoke control system that gives us, our tenants and customers, total peace of mind.”