After the recent Station Design Conference, I received an email from a first-time attendee and member of a West coast architect firm. He took offense to references in one presentation to “Joe-Bob local architect.” I called the writer and he explained his firm is well-established and recognized, and he attended the conference to learn more about designing fire stations.
Many towns and municipalities encourage or require public agencies to use a local architect for their project. While local or general architects may have extensive experience in architecture, fire and emergency stations have evolved with expanded responsibilities, technology and a heightened focus on personnel health and safety. How do architects learn about designing public safety facilities or meet subject matter experts in public safety design? Conferences and networking. Increasingly, more local architects will form a team or partnership with station design specialists.
We asked two station design specialists (SDS), a local architect of record (AoR) and a couple of fire chiefs for their insights on architect teams.
Over the last 25 years, Brian Harris, principal, TCA Architecture + Planning, has worked with a number of local architects across the U.S. “This has been something I have been involved with for years and coached by Paul Erickson, LeMay Erickson Willcox Architects, and others to help better inform the industry,” said Harris.
“A local architect taking on a facility type with limited familiarity can be like a juggler with a few to many balls in the air,” Harris said. “They will eventually fall short on what could have been. In the design of an emergency facility, with a 50-75 year life expectancy, that is not ideal by any means.”
Harris explained reasons for partnerships. “As a fire facility’s technical, operational, and humanistic demands have become continuously more critical and complex, a design specialist’s integrated and immersive understanding of these unique facilities based on long-term research, testing, safety, lessons learned, and the forecasting of design patterns, supports the development of a more holistic future ready design solution.
“While a local ‘generalist’ architect’s knowledge can be invaluable and bring a richness to the design process from a civic and community perspective, understanding less and less about more things, is a challenge for a generalist architect who starts with a limited or anecdotal knowledge base relative to public safety design,” Harris said. “This can a limitation when designing a very specialized emergency facility that is a critical component to a broader delivery system.”
Harris suggested that when teaming with a generalist architect, a specialist design partner can support the design process from a highly informed place. “Advisor, expert, specialist, design sage... call it what you like,” he said. “When formulating a team to design a generational emergency facility, having forward-looking expertise and validation that each attribute of design is addressed and optimized can be quite settling.”
Ken Newell, principal, Stewart Cooper Newell Architects (SCNA) also has extensive experience working with local architect firms across the country. Newell shared suggestions to make the “marriage” of the AoR and the SDS into a successful working relationship and project.
“The two firms typically cannot be regular competitors,” Newell stressed. “Both parties have to have a willingness to share project ownership, responsibility, and credit.” Also important, Newell added, “Both parties have to be firms without big egos--be team players. It quickly becomes evident if the AoR sees the SDS as a ‘necessary evil’ for winning the project only.”
Part of the learning curve for both firms Newell believes is the AoR understands that the client wants the expertise of a national ‘expert’ and the SDS need to understand that the AoR will have to live with the results of the project for fifty or more years.
After attending a station conference in Overland Park, Kansas, Mike Richards, fire chief, and Terry Bigler, assistant chief, Fort Smith, Arkansas, were impressed with Newell’s conference presentations. When it came time for proposals for an architect for their project, Richards reached out to SCNA hoping they would submit. SCNA, in turn, reached out to local architect Studio 6 and offered a partnership on the Fort Smith Station No. 11 project. Together, they won the design commission.
For Station No. 11, SCNA provided the Programming, Schematic Design, detail design for “firematic” items, support and peer review during Design Development and Construction Document Phases, and support during the Construction Phase. Studio 6 provided all other design services, including architecture and all other engineering disciplines.
According to (now retired) Chief Richards, early in the design stage, James Reddick, lead architect, Guest Reddick Architects (now Studio 6), Chief Bigler and himself went to SCNA's headquarters in North Carolina and toured several SCNA-designed fire stations within a 100 mile radius of their office.
“This trip was extremely helpful in educating us on the advantages of partnering with an architect firm that has such great knowledge and experience in public safety facilities,” said Richards. “In fact, one of the fire stations we looked at ended up being a template for the beginning of our final design.” As a result of the successful Station No. 11 project, in 2013, Studio 6 and SCNA once again teamed to win and produce Fort Smith’s new Public Safety Training Center.
Stanley Cole, Cole Architects, Boise, Idaho, is working on their third project with TCA. According to Cole, the benefits of working with a specialist firm like TCA, is that their vast experience in fire station design allows Cole’s design team to provide better services to their clients.
“TCA can provide specific knowledge and understanding of design and site constraints in the early concept design phases and can provide quality control throughout the project,” said Cole.
For firms considering a similar partnership, Cole suggested, “To be successful as a design team, the architecture firms that team on PSA projects need to be able to creatively collaborate throughout the entire process--that means they need to keep their egos’ in check and listen to each other. Our teaming experience has been overwhelmingly positive.”
Ten years ago, ThinkOne in Bozeman, MT, selected TCA for a local project. Recently the two firms’ teamed again on the Central Valley Fire District’s station. Ron Lindroth, fire chief, Central Valley Fire District, Belgrade City Fire Department, required that the local architect firm include an experienced fire station architect on the design team in the selection process of an architect.
The benefits of a fire station specialist were plenty according to Lindroth. “It really helped both me and our local team having someone as a subject matter expert explain in construction language what I was needing to communicate but only had fire language to do so. It also helped with being able to sell things like bi-fold bay doors as a functionality, not just nice looking. Flow plan and travel corridors were important as well,” Lindroth said.
The Central Valley station is unique as it removed the “Red Zone” activities from the station to a standalone facility.
Building a new fire station or public safety facility is a monumental, expensive project that will serve for 50-75 years.
Brian Harris summed up the team approach: “There are many ways in which teams can come together relative to roles and responsibilities. However, working as a team from the start of programming and design through construction completion, avoids the pitfalls of a fractured delivery process in which critical concepts and details are not implemented appropriately.”
What advice would Richards and Lindroth give other chiefs considering teaming architects?
Chief Richards offered, “After attending the Fire Station Design Conferences, I think that any fire department, both career and volunteer, and local architects should attend these conferences as soon as serious discussions begin about building a new or renovating a fire station in their community. The information we learned was invaluable in our project. But it also educated us on new ways to get the best of both worlds during the design and construction of any fire station construction project.”
Lindroth said, “No matter how good of an architect firm you have, unless they have been party to designing and building at least a dozen fire stations of the type you are seeking, I would strongly recommend bringing a fire station specialist on board. You have one chance at getting it right. There is too much at risk in making mistakes that could have been avoided with good insight and forethought.”
“You have one chance at getting it right.”
