We have an apt complex with a main office and four separate apt buildings. Each apt building houses about 8 to 10 residents.
Currently, each apt building has its own fire alarm panel which is monitored by the main Office Fire alarm panel. If a fire is detected in an apt building the main office panel is notified and dials the central office.
My question is can we install a single (intelligent) panel in the main office that will include coverage of each separate atp building? or is there a requirement that each Apt building must have its own panel?
Really depends on what you have on the system. If all you are monitoring is sprinkler flows and tampers, you can get away with one panel for the entire complex. But if you are monitoring smoke detectors, elevator recall, or have a lot of notification, separate panels may be needed. What you have to ask yourself is what is least expensive - while at the same time approved by the AHJ.
Several factors have to be considered. Like Lambda said, the number of devices and the operations in the buildings have to be considered. The wiring distances have to be considered too, especially for NACs. Depending on the NAC current load and the distances, a single panel may need a NAC extender in each building to reduce voltage drop to the appliances that would be on long wire runs.
More wire put outside between buildings increases the possibility of lightning damage to the system. This becomes more of an issue when powered interconnected equipment, such as an SLC operated NAC extender, are in different buildings with their own power feed and grounding systems. Many times this requires fiber optic links between the buildings to avoid expensive lightning damage.
How much of the system can survive in a failure situation has to be considered too. This could be why you have the system configuration there is now. With one large system there could be a catastrophic failure that would cause the entire complex to loose fire protection. And require a site wide fire watch. In the current system, a failure in one system only effects the individual building. The remaining buildings still have working systems that can evacuate that building. A fire watch is only needed in the one failed building.
Here are some on line resources I used when explaining how to minimize lightning damage in campus style systems. One explains how a proper grounding system reduces failures in a single building. The other explains how using fiber optic links between interconnected buildings reduces equipment damage. What really made customers take notice is that these are not Simplex documents. They are produced by a major power company.