Residential/Commercial
Kevin Street Garda Headquarters

Cosgrove Electrical Services completed and handed over the New Kevin Street Garda Headquarters’ in April 2018 which consisted of 5 story over basement, 6,840 square meter divisional HQ, with a 5,400 square meter double basement. This prestigious OPW project is no average Garda Station, it is if fact the New Dublin Garda Headquarters, with many Garda specialist departments being relocated from the old Garda Headquarters in Harcourt Street.

The New Kevin Street Garda Headquarters was a zero snag, turn-key project. With such a critical service as the Garda Siochana taking possession of the building, everything had to be perfect. The Electrical Installation was a state of the art installation using all of the latest and most up to date technologies. Coupling that with the complexity and attention to detail required in specialist areas and systems within the custodial areas of the building, this was a very exciting project to be part of.

A new 10kV MV switch and transformer were installed, tested and commissioned as part of the new electrical supply to the Kevin Street Garda Headquarters The new Main Electrical Distribution Board was a bespoke design, nestled within the heart of the building, with interlocking facilities for not only the newly supplied 1650kVA standby generator but also the facility for connection of a further remote generator. 25 further LV Sub Distribution Boards and numerous Mechanical Control Centres were installed throughout the building supplying LV services to all corners of the project. Localised UPS back-up was installed for all the communications installation, CCTV systems, and other security systems such as access control, intruder alarm, cell call and panic systems.

The Structured Cabling installation consisted of a fibre, resilient fibre and copper backbone from the MDF in the main server room to each of the 5no. IDF’s in the hub rooms which house in excess of 1200 CAT6 field points. All the structured cabling was tested commissioned and certified to the relevant standard. The Luminaries used on the project had the latest in LED and DALI technology and were controlled by presence, absence and daylight sensors. Emergency lighting was typically stand-alone LED throughout with central test units located in each sub distribution board.

The fire alarm installation was an Advanced System network with Apollo devices. The fire alarm linked into numerous third part systems including 3no.MCC panels, 6no.fire curtain systems, 10no. AOV systems, 1no. SFD system, 2no. Lifts, 1no. Carpark ventilation system 3no. fire suppression systems and a very substantial access control system. Three different IP CCTV installations were installed into the Kevin Street Garda Headquarters, each with its own different security access rights. A separate dedicated network and network video recorder was installed for each of the three systems. Two of systems were backed up on high end RAID 5 servers to ensure their resilience and no loss of recording time.

Kevin Street Garda Station has a substantial access control system power by numerous Act 4000 Pro multi door controllers. There is approximately 50 access controlled doors on the project, all with different levels of access rights and items of sensitive nature behind them. The Act System can be controlled and monitored from the dedicated PC and software supplied for the project.

There are 10no. rooms on the project with Audio Visual packages ranging for display screens to video conferencing meeting rooms, to presentation and lecture rooms, all with the latest high specification equipment.

Specialised areas within the Garda Headquaters demanded the highest attention to detail. Areas such as the detention cells, interview rooms, prisoner yard, armoury, evidence lockups, CCTV monitoring and recording areas and custodial common areas all had their own tailored systems standards and specifications to adhere to.