Orlando International Airport (MCO)
Fire Alarm And Life Safety
Central Florida
Orlando International Airport (MCO) is a major air transportation hub serving both domestic and international travelers. It is Florida’s busiest airport and the seventh busiest in the United States, and it operates around the clock with no realistic window in which life safety systems can simply be switched off.
JSC Systems collaborated with the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority and with Turner-Kiewit and Hensel Phelps to enhance the fire alarm network within the Automatic People Mover (APM) Complex at Orlando International Airport. The multi-million dollar project involved expanding the fire alarm network across both the APM and the Intermodal Transfer Facility (ITF) areas, contributing to improved safety measures throughout the airport. JSC Systems worked directly with the construction management firms overseeing the APM Complex construction to ensure the successful implementation of the fire alarm system enhancements.
The APM Complex and the ITF are transit structures rather than conventional buildings. They combine long guideway runs, station platforms, back-of-house plant areas and public concourse space, and each of those environments places different demands on detection, notification and survivability. Extending one coherent fire alarm network across all of them, rather than leaving each structure with its own isolated panel, was central to the brief.
Work of this scope draws on the full range of JSC’s fire alarm and life safety capability rather than a single product line. The elements that typically make up a network expansion of this kind include:
Three constraints shape almost every decision on a live airport project.
The facility never closes. Passenger movement through the APM and the ITF continues while the work is under way, so installation, cutover and testing have to be sequenced around live operations and coordinated with airport staff, not simply scheduled for a convenient shutdown.
Multiple parties hold part of the picture. The aviation authority, the construction management firms, the trades on site and the authority having jurisdiction all have requirements that have to be reconciled. Keeping the fire alarm scope aligned with a moving construction program is as much a coordination task as a technical one.
Compliance has to be demonstrable, not assumed. A system in a facility of this profile is inspected, tested and documented against NFPA requirements, and the record of that work matters as much as the installation itself.
JSC employs NICET III and IV fire alarm design professionals who produce detailed installation work plans that meet applicable codes and satisfy AHJ requirements. Dedicated project managers, lead technicians and certified installers then execute those plans on site. On a project inside an operating airport that structure matters: the design intent, the site sequencing and the acceptance testing are held by the same team, so changes on the construction program do not quietly become gaps in the finished system.
The fire alarm network now extends across both the APM Complex and the Intermodal Transfer Facility as a single expanded system, improving life safety coverage for one of the busiest passenger environments in the country and giving the aviation authority one network to monitor and maintain rather than several disconnected ones.
JSC Systems is a licensed low-voltage contractor in Florida (EF20000375) as well as Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Alabama. The same team that delivers airport-scale work supports commercial, healthcare, education, government and multifamily facilities across Central Florida:
To discuss a fire alarm project in Central Florida, contact JSC Systems or call 1-800-515-5613.
