Recently I have had several enquiries regarding the Building Code of Australia (BCA) in relation to fire trips.
Security installers, consultants and clients often have conflicting ideas about what is required under the BCA. This leads to confusion and doubt, access to the BCA is not cheap and therefore it is often not consulted. This discussion covers electric locks & fire trips as commonly encountered in the commercial and government environment.
The 2012 BCA section D2.21 (Operation of Latch) contains the most relevant information to this discussion. In summary D2.21(iv) dictates that an door in a required exit or in a path to a required exit must be readily openable without a key to give egress except if the door is fitted with a fail-safe device which automatically unlocks the door upon the activation of any sprinkler system, smoke or other detector system installed throughout the building.
Basically this means that a required exit door with an electric lock and exit card reader or exit button must be fire tripped to unlock in the event of an alarm from any fire system anywhere in the building. The electric lock must be fail safe and while not explicitly stated it makes sense that fire trip signal must also be fail safe.
Section D2.21 explains that there are circumstances and certain building types that allow variation and different solutions to the above. Copies of the BCA can be obtained from http://www.abcb.gov.au/
The Jack Fuse Power Port solution provides an automatic, fail safe method of fire triping multiple electric locks in any access control system.