Pine Telephone Systems, Inc. is a rural telecom company headquartered in Halfway, Oregon and owns and operates the exchanges of Halfway and Granite in Northeastern Oregon and the Three Rivers Exchange north of Bend. It has always been the philosophy of Pine Telephone Systems to provide its customers access to the best technologies available and to protect their infrastructure investments, they contracted with Northwest Fire Suppression to consult and develop a custom solution tailored to their unique requirements.
John Durkin, managing owner of Northwest Fire Suppression, personally visited each of Pine Telephone’s remote facilities and conducted an extensive hazard analysis to determine their specific fire protection needs. Upon completion of the hazard analysis, meeting were held with operations and facilities managers at Pine Telephone and a thorough consultation was given by John to review findings and discuss specific recommendations. Inergen, a “totally green” gaseous fire agent system, was recommended for the Central Office location and implemented, while a more cost effective FM200 fire agent was recommended for the smaller and remote POP locations.
Northwest Fire Suppression was able to put together and implement a solution that specifically addressed Pine Telephone’s requirements as well as working with them on an approach that fit within their budget. Keys to the success of the project included: close collaboration of Northwest Fire and Pine Telephone as a working team, time investment to travel to each rural location and buy not just applying a generic blanket approach to unique fire requirements. Northwest Fire and their dedicated staff pride themselves in being a consultative partner and not just another fire protection vendor and that can be seen in the long-standing relationships that have been established over the years.