As the prime contractor, Apogee was tasked to provide a new in-building mass notification system for the Durham VAMC that will cover Buildings 1 and 23 in order to facilitate public and code blue announcements. The system allows for later expansion in order to expand coverage to those areas, and to other buildings on the campus. Paging zones for the system were assigned based on existing building wings. The emergency and psychology departments will only have speakers at the nurses’ stations and will not have speakers in the corridors. The rest of the facility will have speakers in the corridors and select meeting rooms.

The team designed an overhead paging system for Buildings 1 and 23 that houses the amplifiers and all related equipment. Paging stations were provided in the police center, executive offices, and call center. The speakers are located approximately 16 feed on center in the corridors as well as in large rooms, specified offices, and conference rooms. The mechanical rooms have horn type speakers to be set at 4 watts based on the room ambient noise level.

The new head-end equipment and amplifiers were provided with UPS units and were installed in floor mount 2-post data racks or in wall-mount data racks. New single mode fiber was installed utilizing LC type connectors. Designed new receptacles and circuit breakers to add to the existing critical branch emergency power panels to power the new paging system head end equipment.