As part of the extensive redevelopment of the East Midlands airport terminal, A1S Group was employed by BAM Construction to work with 5Plus Architects to devise a smoke containment strategy to protect the airport’s occupants.

With 4.3 million travellers passing through the airport each year, there was a strict set of unique requirements whereby the smoke and fire curtains needed to have an advanced level of safety and bespoke features in order to facilitate a larger scale evacuation in the event of a fire.

What we delivered

To meet these requirements, we manufactured eight Flameshield 120 fire and smoke curtains with a rating time of 2 hours, an industry leading duration to contain fire and smoke.

In order to maximise evacuation time due to the large volume of occupants in the building, we incorporated additional features such as timed delay closure facilities, which enable the curtains descent to be delayed for a programmable period whilst it is still safe to do so.

As an additional safety measure, we produced and installed laser emitted obstruction sensors into the fixtures, which activate audio warning devices when obstructed.

Alongside this, as the biggest investment the airport has seen in 17 years, it was important that all work was aligned to the aesthetics of the newly designed terminal. For one particular area of the mall within the airport, we produced a bespoke 7-meter wide Flameshield 120 shutter, which was power coated colour finish to compliment the interior of the mall.