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Professional Sound Consultancy Ltd. was awarded a £300,000 contract in 2007 to upgrade and provide a site wide network to the Public Address/Voice Evacuation system within the London Stansted Airport.

As the third busiest airport in the UK with over 32 scheduled and charter airlines serving 165 destinations across 35 countries and 23.4 million passengers passing through each year, an impeccable emergency Voice Evacuation system is top priority. To ensure speedy, safe and clear directions to all passengers, members of the public and staff in the event of an emergency, pre-recorded voice messages are relayed throughout the airport. These messages can only be overridden by the fire crews on their arrival at the scene using their official microphone.

The upgrade project was extremely complex requring a detailed study of the condition, capacity and possible improvements to the existing system by Professional Sound Consultancy prior to official presentation to the British Airports Authority (BAA) project management team.

Installing a Voice Evacuation network as part of a new installation is relatively straightforward when utilising a single manufacturer's equipment and engineering a solution from a blank canvas. Stansted Airport has various manufacturers' Voice Evacuation and Public Address systems distributed throughout the site. Retrospective engineering is a specialty of Professional Sound Consultancy's highly trained and experienced electronics engineers who regularly work down to component level. This allows customers to achieve the most cost effective system upgrades or enhancements without the need for total replacement of existing equipment.

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Professional Sound Consultancy presented a proposal and project strategy to BAA and was awarded the contract to carry out the works in February 2007. The project had a tight 4-month time scale for completion by the start of the busy summer passenger season.

As with all large projects Professional Sound Consultancy assigned a dedicated project manager, lead engineer and designer to the contract. Maintaining consistency of staff throughout a project term is essential and the Stansted team retained close contact with BAA for regular work and schedule reviews.

As airports cannot open without the emergency system being fully operational, an exacting work schedule had to be completed each night after the last flight and before the first flight the next day. Any task not completed successfully during the night would have meant the whole night's labour was lost and the emergency system returned to the previous evening's status.

To reduce the amount of work required on site and minimise any required down time of the system, project planning was paramount. All required hardware and software changes to the Voice Evacuation Systems were simulated by Professional Sound Consultancy prior to installation on site. A complete Voice Evacuation fibre network was also assembled and fully programmed to the airport's configuration requirements for demonstration and approval by the BAA project management team.

As a result of successfully completing the project in 2008 Professional Sound Consultancy was awarded a further contract to design, install and commission a complete Voice Evacuation system to the £40 million Stansted Terminal Extension.