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Customer Project Guatemala City

Marriott AC Cayalá in Guatemala City

How we helped ensure full hotel compartmentation for high-end interior finishing requirements

The AC is a newly built Marriott hotel on the Paseo Cayalá, a lively shopping and dining street in the heart of Guatemala City. Each of the 114 rooms is visibly high-spec – providing all the technology and convenience you would expect in a modern hotel. The invisible features are, however, what sets the AC Cayalá apart. Hidden behind the visible features provided for comfort, a network of passive installations help to keep all occupants safer in case of fire.

The challenge

Firestopping common joints

The installation of active fire protection measures, such as fire detectors and sprinklers, is very important, but not enough to provide effective fire protection. In fact, according to the company’s fire safety requirements, Marriott buildings must have both active and passive firestop systems.

For the AC Cayalá, firestopping the most common joints, such as those between the drywall and concrete primary structure accounted for the largest portion of passive fire protection instalments required in the building.

Experienced firestop professionals and contractors know that this operation is a complex task. Faulty compartmentation due to poor-quality firestopping of joints can accelerate the spread of smoke and fire. It is therefore crucial that both parties work together to identify the right solution tailored to their client’s needs.

Our solution

Application of CFS-SP WB firestop joint spray

Compartmentalization of each individual room

While the general contractor, Grupo Cayalá, was designing their guest room prototype to get Marriott’s approval, we offered to help a make a schematic firestop proposal as a first option for the overall project.

On-site technical estimations were made with the project managers, who had not yet defined the scope of fireproofing the joints. Our Field Engineers were asked to propose several firestopping options matching the building specifications while considering both Marriott’s and local authorities’ requirements in terms of passive fire protection.

We provided three coverage proposals: from basic compartmentalization – only covering evacuation areas, up to a more complete solution – requiring each room to be individually compartmentalized.

The latter was the winning proposal: not only did we help ensure high-performance and verifiable passive fire safety measures, but we were able to deliver a system that matched the standards requested by our client. This was achieved thanks to the close collaboration with the contractor and careful product selection.