Tru Homewood Suites Hilton Public Safety DAS - ANS Advanced Network Services

Project Overview:

New construction of a hotel in Albany, NY required a Public Safety Communication Repeater System under the building/fire code adopted by the Albany & Guilderland County fire districts.
The newly adopted fire code had no set standard for this type of system requiring consistent collaboration with the AHJ (Authority Having Jurisdiction) and hotel management.
ANS worked efficiently and quickly to deploy proper signal coverage for First Responders in the building while using equipment that maintained the venue’s overall aesthetics.
ANS established a close connected relationship with the AHJ and hotel management to ensure work was completed timely and properly with specific attention to detail.

Challenge

The first dual-branded hotel by Homewood Suites & Tru by Hilton partnered with Pyramid Group opened for business in Albany, near Crossgates Mall in 2018. The Albany & Guilderland Fire Districts, under the FCC had recently adopted a new building/fire code, which requires that all new and existing commercial buildings have a communication repeater system in place.

The repeater system is required to provide adequate coverage for First Responders and other public safety workers to communicate via two-way radio within the building. Because the fire code was new to the AHJ, no standard was yet in place for installing this type of communication repeater system.

Solution

Since this was the first Digital BDA for public safety frequencies in the area, ANS worked closely with the AHJ and hotel management to ensure that the system build was completed quickly and properly, deploying equipment that did not hinder the hotel’s aesthetic.

ANS implemented a SOLiD Responder Active BDA, which was selected for a few key reasons:

The ability to select up to 36 channels for configuration at any given time
Can handle multiple users at once and allow for future channels to be added by the municipality
SOLiD Responder and its topology is identical to that of a cellular BDA system, allowing for seamless installation
Small footprint minimizes space needed and allowing it to be placed virtually anywhere in the building

After the build-out had been completed, ANS engineers implemented and programmed the BDA for the specific control and talk around channels. Once the BDA was configured for optimal power throughout the building, the system remained on and ANS engineers walked the building using industry standard RF data collection equipment to verify system functionality.

This test walk included the Deputy Chief of the Guilderland Police Department, Public Safety Communications Consultant for the town of Guilderland, Pyramid Group Management Personnel, as well as Hotel Management. After the test walk was completed and accepted by the key people as required, the system remained online “live” and the hotel was ready to respond in any event of emergency.

With the installation of this in-building communication system, strong and even wireless coverage was achieved throughout the hotel. Currently there are zero “dead zones” for public safety personnel while communicating back to their base station. In the event of any emergency, communication will not be an obstacle for First Responders.