NFPA Journal - July/August 2018 - 28

MANAGING

MAGNITUDE

We have been part of the commissioning process for 11 projects in
Macau, each with gross areas exceeding
one million square feet. The first and
smallest project for us was the Sands
Macao, which opened in 2004 with
approximately 1.7 million square feet.
The Sands Macao was the first new
casino after the Chinese government
ended a four-decade gaming monopoly in 2002 and opened the market
to six casino concessions. The success
of the Sands Macao was immediate,
with its $240 million in construction
bonds paid off within nine months.
This created a frantic construction
boom of megacasino/resorts, the largest of which, the Sands Cotai Central,
opened in 2012 with 13.8 million square
feet-the equivalent of nearly 240 football fields. The price of construction
increased with the size of the facilities,
with the Wynn Palace Cotai, which
opened in 2016 with approximately 4.8
million square feet, costing $4.2 billion.
As would be expected, the size and
complexity of the fire protection and life
safety systems in these facilities are proportional to the size of the buildings and
can result in increased commissioning

28 | NFPA JOURNAL * J U L Y /A U G U S T 2 0 1 8

challenges. These projects can include
over 100 peer-to-peer fire detection and
alarm panels with hundreds of auxiliary
power supplies monitoring and controlling more than 10,000 devices. Those
devices, in turn, are integrated with over
100 sprinkler system zones, alternate
suppression systems, elevator controllers, and more than 50 (each) smoke
control and access control systems. This
does not include the number of generators monitored, shutters and door
closers controlled, and a variety of other
emergency control functions associated
with mega-integrated systems.
This challenge applies to commissioning approaches, too. Locally
accepted processes and procedures for
system commissioning may not address
complete system integration or require
the same level of system verification for
performance, reliability, and survivability as demanded by NFPA, nor require
the same professional qualifications
and certifications.
The adopted codes and standards for
the built environment define the fire
and life safety system requirements.
These requirements tend to become
more complex with every new code and

standard edition and are magnified as
the system requirements increase with
the size, use, occupant load, intricacy,
and associated hazards. Considering
that the casino/resort megaprojects
being built in Macau include all of
these challenges-and with assembly
occupant loads in the larger projects
comparable to small U.S. cities-the
process of commissioning these systems can be daunting.

NEWSCOM

For the last 14 years, Jensen Hughes
has been involved with the building
commissioning process in Macau,
a special administrative region on the
southern coast of China, across the
Zhujiang River estuary from Hong
Kong. Macau is home to some of
the largest assembly-use buildings
in the world, many of them mixeduse casino/resorts, structures that
have earned it the nickname of
"the Las Vegas of Asia."
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - July/August 2018
