St. Petersburg
SKA Arena
Low-voltage systems at SKA Arena: fire alarm, voice evacuation, CCTV, access control and structured cabling — 103 km of cable and 11,700 fire detectors.
- Low-voltage systems
The project in numbers
Based on the estimates of our contracts on the project
SKA Arena is the home arena of SKA hockey club in St. Petersburg and one of the largest-capacity hockey arenas in the world. It was built on the site of the Petersburg Sports and Concert Complex and opened in December 2023. Our team installed low-voltage systems at the arena.
Our scope
We installed the arena's low-voltage safety and communication systems:
- addressable fire alarm;
- voice alarm and evacuation management with fire-resistant cable lines;
- two-way communication with the fire post;
- CCTV;
- access control;
- intrusion alarm;
- structured cabling.
Systems
Fire alarm
An addressable system with about 11,700 detectors: smoke, heat and manual call points. Large volumes are protected by aspirating detectors that continuously sample the air. Control panels and relay modules collect the signals, and the operator sees the whole arena on a workstation.
Equipment: Rubezh, TITANUS aspirating detectors, Granit linear heat cable
Voice alarm and evacuation
Voice announcements must be heard everywhere in the arena: in the bowl, lobbies, corridors and service areas. That is why the system has about 2,750 loudspeakers of several types: wall-mounted speakers, sound columns and powerful horn speakers for large spaces. Central units, amplifiers and microphone consoles let the operator address the arena zone by zone, and backup power units keep the system running during a power cut.
Equipment: META loudspeakers and horns, central units, amplifiers, microphone consoles
Fire-resistant lines
Fire alarm and voice alarm lines must keep working during a fire. They run in fire-resistant cable inside steel conduit and flexible tubing. Almost 3,900 junction boxes are fire-resistant and fitted with short-circuit isolators, so damage to one section does not take the whole line down. Penetrations through walls and slabs are sealed with fire-stopping foam and discs, and every line is tested for continuity.
Equipment: KPSng(A)-FRHF and KSBng(A)-FRHF fire-resistant cables, META fire-resistant boxes
Communication with the fire post
About 290 call points along the escape routes and in the safe areas give two-way communication with the fire post operator: people there can report where they are and receive instructions.
Equipment: call points, including flush-mounted units
CCTV
960 IP cameras: domes indoors and weatherproof bullets, 2 MP, H.265 compression and IR illumination. The images go to the video walls of the security post.
Equipment: 2 MP IP cameras, video wall brackets
Access control
About 1,380 contactless card readers at the entrances to service areas, connected to the controllers over the secure OSDP protocol.
Equipment: HID iCLASS SE and NVITE readers, Bosch AMC2 controllers
Intrusion alarm
An addressable intrusion alarm: volumetric and surface detectors, door contacts, panic buttons, expansion modules and backup power.
Equipment: Bosch LSN, Foton-10BM detectors, Rubezh addressable door contacts
Structured cabling
About 41 km of Category 6A cable with every pair shielded and about 7,550 Category 6A modules: the network for the arena's computers, phones and IP cameras.
Equipment: Cat 6A U/FTP cable, keystone modules, Legrand Mosaic outlets
How the work went
- Sector by sector. The building is divided into 14 sectors, and installation went sector by sector and floor by floor to the overall construction schedule.
- Routes. Steel conduit, flexible tubing, cable trays and fixings, almost all of it more than two metres above the floor, from scaffolds and towers.
- Installation. About 103 km of cable, detectors, loudspeakers, cameras, readers and fire-resistant boxes.
- Testing. Continuity tests of every line, labelling, as-built drawings and checklists for each area.
What made the project special
- Scale. 103 km of cable lines, 11,700 fire detectors and 960 cameras across the 14 sectors of an arena for 21,500 spectators.
- Work at height. Most of the installation was done more than two metres up, in the bowl and under the slabs.
- Fire resistance. The fire alarm, voice alarm and fire post lines are installed so that they keep working during a fire.
- A major construction site. Our work ran alongside the finishing trades and other building services on one of the city's key construction projects.
Interesting facts
- The arena was built on the site of the Petersburg Sports and Concert Complex, demolished in spring 2020.
- By design, SKA Arena was to become the largest-capacity hockey arena in the world, overtaking the Bell Centre in Montreal. For the 2024 playoffs its capacity was raised to 22,500.
- The facade concept is by the Austrian studio Coop Himmelb(l)au, inspired by Tatlin's Tower, El Lissitzky's posters and the trajectories of figure skating.
- The arena was commissioned on 3 November 2023 and opened on 9 December with the KHL All-Star Game.