The brief

A landmark refurbishment on Fleet Street.

A 1980s commercial building — originally a flagship office — refurbished in full as a contemporary tenanted estate alongside the adjacent Daniel House. The Stage 4 fire strategy unified the two buildings into a single campus, opened the ground floor with a courtyard and twin atria, and depended on a layered defence of detection, suppression, evacuation and access control to deliver life safety at scale.

Gemini AMPM was appointed by Mace Interiors as the specialist subcontractor for the complete fire and life-safety package. The scope was unusual in its scale and integration — nine independent technical systems, all of which had to coexist within a single cause-and-effect model and operate as one building.

The site — two buildings, one campus. Peterborough Court is a 15-floor building — three basement levels and twelve floors at and above ground — accessed from Fleet Street through the smaller, 10-storey Daniel House and a central external courtyard. The basement levels hold substations, HV switchrooms, sprinkler tanks, the loading bay and central plant; the ground floor brings the Long Gallery, the retail/café atrium, the brasserie, reception and the courtyard interface; the upper floors are office space.

The approach

Single accountability across nine systems.

Where most projects of this scale split fire and security across two or three subcontractors, Gemini delivered every life-safety and security system from a single point of accountability — one commissioning team, one cause-and-effect document, one asset register at handover, one ongoing maintenance partner. Each system was designed against its own British or European Standard, but the matrix that binds them — which device, in which zone, on which floor, drives which output — was authored and owned in-house.

The build traces the four words behind the company’s name: Asset · Management · Planned · Maintenance. The same team carried this campus through every phase — and remains in place as it operates.

Phase 01 · Asset — design contribution (2022–2024)

Engaged early through Mace Interiors as the specialist subcontractor for the full fire and life-safety package. Coordination with OFR Consultants’ fire strategy, Chapman BDSP’s MEP and cause-and-effect design, and JRA’s architectural intent — Peterborough Court and Daniel House treated as one building from the outset.

Phase 02 · Management — installation delivery (2024–2026)

A four-thousand-device installation across two buildings — fifteen floors in total including three basement levels, plus plant decks, atria, the Long Gallery, retail, brasserie, courtyard and the disabled-refuge network. Nine integrated systems delivered concurrently against Mace’s interior fit-out programme.

Phase 03 · Planned — commissioning & handover (Q1 2026)

Phased commissioning across 28 fire-alarm panel nodes against a 350+ row cause-and-effect matrix. HDR Consulting engaged as independent commissioning witness. Integrated Systems Testing completed with the design team and Mace. Practical Completion achieved on 13 March 2026, with City of London Building Control sign-off the same day.

Phase 04 · Maintenance — the partnership (2026 onward)

Retained as the original maintaining contractor under CBRE’s planned maintenance contract. Asset register, software keys, original cause-and-effect and the engineers who commissioned the building all remain in Gemini’s care. No handover gap, no learning curve — the same team, from build into custodianship.

Nine systems, one integrated whole

Each system was designed against its own standard; the cause-and-effect matrix made them behave as one building.

01 · Fire detection & alarm — BS 5839-1, Category L1

A 28-node fault-tolerant fire-alarm network spanning two buildings via single-mode fibre — Advanced MxPro 5 panels running Hochiki analogue addressable loops, 4,864 addressable devices, commissioned against a 350+ row cause-and-effect matrix with HDR as independent witness. Loop calculations were performed against Hochiki’s true current draw, eliminating the loop-PSU overload failure mode common to converted designs. Node configuration files remain in Gemini’s custody to underwrite the maintenance contract.

02 · Voice alarm — BS 5839-8, campus-wide PAVA

Baldwin Boxall Vigil 3 across both buildings, with trigger inputs from the MxPro 5 network driving zone-specific messages and tones per the cause-and-effect matrix. Speech intelligibility verified at commissioning against STIPA criteria. Day/night profiles support quieter occupied-hours operation without compromising intelligibility.

03 · Disabled refuge — BS 5839-9

Baldwin Boxall Omnicare at each refuge point with master annunciation at the Fire Control Centre — deliberately separated onto its own cabling, annunciator and supply. Phased evacuation in a tall building is only credible if every occupant has a way of being heard.

04 · Aspirating smoke detection — BS EN 54-20

High-sensitivity air-sampling detection across sensitive risers, switchrooms and IT spaces — continuous sampling through small-bore pipework with multi-stage alarm thresholds, integrated to the MxPro 5 network. Pipework runs were modelled to verify transport time, hole sensitivity and balance — the step routinely skipped on lower-grade designs and the most common cause of ASD non-conformance.

05 · Gas suppression — IG55 inert gas, BS EN 15004

Three flooding zones across two basement levels protecting the HV substations and switchrooms. IG55 (50% argon / 50% nitrogen) was selected over chemical agents on a combined assessment of personnel safety, equipment compatibility and operational cost — life-safe for occupants, benign to the equipment it protects. Manual hold and abort at each protected space; integrated to the global cause-and-effect.

06 · Fire curtains — BS 8524-1

Specialist fire-curtain deployment across the atrium edges, the Long Gallery interface and concealed compartment lines — triggered through the MxPro 5 cause-and-effect matrix. Compartmentation delivered where architectural openness was non-negotiable, with no orphan systems: every actuator is testable as part of the integrated commissioning regime.

07 · Video surveillance — BS EN 62676, NSI NCP205

Approximately 130 Hikvision IP cameras, positioned with line-of-sight, lens and light analysis at each location, and designed against the OFR fire strategy’s emergency-vehicle and evacuation routes — security and life-safety design aligned from the outset rather than overlaid afterwards. Recording, retention and analytics carried into the maintenance contract.

08 · Access control — BS EN 60839-11, NSI NCP104

Genetec Security Center Synergis as the platform of record, with HID Global readers and credentials, Boon Edam speed lanes, Apple Wallet and CBRE tenant-app credentials, and destination lift control via the Kone interface. Gemini’s role was making seven separate platforms behave as a single, friction-free tenant journey — credential on the phone, ID at the lane, lift summoned automatically.

09 · Intruder detection — BS EN 50131 Grade 2, NSI NCP104

Ajax Systems wireless platform across both buildings with dual-path signalling — Grade 2 compliance and insurance requirements met without driving conduit through a finished commercial fit-out. Wireless scales cleanly as the tenant mix changes: adding zones for a new fit-out is a configuration task, not a cabling exercise.

The outcome

Practical Completion on 13 March 2026, with City of London Building Control acceptance the same day and independent commissioning-witness sign-off. Defects were closed against an evidence-based register cross-referencing the cause-and-effect matrices to the panel device download.

Gemini was the original installing contractor — and is now the original maintaining contractor under CBRE’s planned maintenance contract. The original commissioning engineers, cause-and-effect matrices, software keys and device-by-device records all remain in Gemini’s care. The asset register sits at Revision 02, structured across landlord-paid and tenant-paid coverage so the building operator and the occupants both know exactly what they are paying for. There is no handover gap and no learning curve — the same partnership, taken from build into custodianship.

“The same building. The same systems. The same team — from build into custodianship.”

Metrics

  • 4,864 addressable fire devices
  • 236 detection zones
  • 28 networked fire-alarm panel nodes
  • ~130 CCTV cameras across the campus
  • 9 integrated systems delivered from a single point of accountability
  • 2 buildings unified as one campus
  • 0 days between Practical Completion and Building Control sign-off

Credits

  • Lead company: Gemini AMPM Ltd — fire & life-safety subcontractor
  • Main contractor: Mace Interiors
  • Building operator: CBRE (managing agent)
  • Architect: JRA
  • Fire engineer: OFR Consultants
  • MEP & cause-and-effect: Chapman BDSP
  • Commissioning witness: HDR Consulting
  • Practical Completion: 13 March 2026 — Building Control sign-off the same day
  • Accreditations: NSI Gold · BAFE SP203 · NSI NCP104 · NSI NCP205