Coventry Station

Colt recently worked on Coventry’s new £82M city centre railway station, which was completed in January 2022.

M&E Contractor, Orton Group, contacted Colt to help with the installation of the car park smoke control system at the station. Our unrivalled expertise in smoke control and our vast experience in providing smoke and ventilation solutions in complex car park projects simply made us the best choice. Colt also gave advice to the design team through the consultant KGF Cox from a very early stage of the project and were therefore familiar with the project throughout the tender process. Due to our in-house design capability, Colt also carried out all CFD modelling for this project.

The new building in Coventry has improved access to platforms, shops and an entrance from Warwick Road. There is also a new bus interchange accessible by a walkway from the station.

From first contact with Colt, the project ran for approximately 18 months, with some unfortunate, unforeseen delays, such as a shortage of fire sealant, causing some disruption. However, even with these challenges, the Colt team still managed to achieve their program and get the vents installed within time and in scope.

The requirement on this project was to install a smoke control system in the stair cores of the car park as a life-safety system. The Colt systems will ensure that in the event of a fire the stairways will remain clear of smoke, enabling occupants to escape and fire crews to attend to the fire quickly and safely.

Control panels and displays were also installed in the foyer of the building for easy access and management. Faults can easily be seen from here and the fire crews can easily see what floor the system has activated on to help them discover the seat of the fire more quickly. Colt systems will only activate on one level at a time when the smoke detectors sense there is smoke. Once activated, the dampers will open and suck smoke up and out the top and sides of the building to keep escape routes free from smoke.