Replacing a mixture of alarm platforms with modern alarms for the beginning of the 21 Century

This paper describes the reason behind the deployment, of a new alarm platform, to provide a high level of visibility and performance of BT UK power and environmental infrastructure from one management centre. This paper outlines the management philosophy of handling alarms and the need for a reliable system with growth capacity and the ability to perform the basic alarm display from plant with granularity and capable of automatic maintenance routines. The whole decision of selecting a suitable new alarm platform was complicated by the variety of different types of equipment to be connected, some being forty years old. It was further complicated by the need to connect plant which had controllers that were early microprocessors controlled, never designed for machine, machine interface.