Planning and Design of a Public Safety Facility - Essay Example

Developing the planning and design of a Public Safety Facility (Executive Summary: This paper works on planning and design of Public Safety Facility for the city of Pinellas Park. While designing the facilities, all the necessary criterions required for designing a Public Safety Facility has been considered. The use of Green Technology also considered. Methods of funding for the project also is suggested) Introduction This study deals with the design and development of a Public Safety Facility for the city of Pinellas Park, situated in Pinellas County, Florida State. The departments included in the scope of this study are: 1. Police Department, 2. Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department. In order to develop the public safety facility, the specifications and necessary criteria like site related systems, building systems, work-space analysis and related technologies, building interiors including layouts, furnishings, finishes and equipment, have been considered to formulate the basis of the design. Demographics of the city of Pinellas Park: Pinellas Park is a city in the county of Pinellas, in Florida State. The city is situated 5 miles north of Saint Petersburg, and the nearest large city is Tampa. The total area of Pinellas Park is around 38.7 square kilometers, with approximately 19,500 households and a population density of around 1200 per square kilometer. According to the Bureau of census, US Department of Commerce, the population of the city since 1990 is as follows: 1. Year 1990 - 43,426. 2. Year 2000 - 45,628. 3. Year 2004 - 47166. This represents a population growth rate of around 5% per decade. It is therefore decided to design a facility capable of serving a population of around 50,000,which will take care of the population growth in the next decade. Requirements for staffing and other support facilities: The requirement for staffing and other support facilities of the two departments under this study are taken up separately as follows: Police Department: Staffing: At present this department is divided into three divisions, namely Operations, Services and Investigations. Each division is commanded by a captain and is under the overall control of the Chief of Police. The recommended national average of police officers is 2.6 officers per 1000 residents. As per this recommendation, the desired strength of officers in this case will be around 130 officers. Currently, the patrol section, which is the largest component of the operations division of the Pinellas Park police department in terms of staffing, comprises of 14-officer level and 48 patrol staff. We can thus assume a support staff ratio of 3 per police officer. Hence the requirement for staffing is needed for 130 police officers and 390 support staff. As far as the space requirement is concerned, assuming 3 shifts of 8 hours, we will require to house around 44 officers and 130 support staff at any given time. The housing requirement for the staff will be as follows: 1. Office of the police chief and his assistant staff: This will need an area of 500 sq. feet 2. 10 cabins of 200 sq. feet each for the senior officers. 3. A large hall of 3000 sq. feet for other officers. 4. A large hall of 3000 sq. feet for the support staff, assuming 50 % of the ground staff is on patrol duty. Other Support Facilities: The following facilities are needed for the smooth operation of the police department: Toilets and restrooms. (10 nos. @ 100 Sq. feet each = 1000 sq. feet) 1. Record room. (500 Sq. feet) 2. Locker room for the belongings of staff. (1000 sq. ft) 3. Hall for storage of arms and ammunition. (1000 sq. ft) 4. Interrogation room. (200 sq. ft.) 5. Conference hall. (1000 sq. ft) 6. Jail facility for detention of convicts. (1000 sq ft.) 7. Parking Area for fleet of transport vehicles. (5000 sq ft) 8. Control room with installation of communication facilities for organizing patrol and other duties. (500 sq. ft.) If the parking area is considered separately, the building area necessary is around 14700 sq. feet. We can consider 2 floors to reduce the plan area requirement to around 7350 sq. ft. considering a 50% ratio of the constructed area to the land area, the total land area required for the police department will be 19700 sq. feet (2x 7350 + 5000). Fire Department and EMS department: The Pinellas Park Fire Department Administrative Division comprises of the offices of the Fire Chief, Operations Chief, EMS Chief and District Chiefs along with theDivision Director, Staff Lieutenant of EMS, and various support staff. The administrative division alsoincludesaclassroom training facilityand the Emergency Operations Center. The current Operations Division of the fire department of Pinellas Park city is under the directions of the Deputy Chief of operations. The EMS department operates under the directions of District chief of EMS. The overall control of both the divisions is under the Chief of fire department. The department responds to over 1000 calls per month with a maximum response time of 4 minutes and maintains a fleet of 6 ALS (advanced life support) vehicles staffed by trained paramedics and 2 basic life support vehicles. The department responds to 911 calls as well as medical emergencies. The current nationally recommended figures for fire emergencies is a maximum response time of 5 minutes and 7 minutes for Ambulance services. The maximum calls allowed per ambulance are 2500 calls per month. Hence, we can safely take the existing staffing and equipment figures for our design. We are assuming a staff strength of 15 senior Officers, 45 officers and a supporting staff of 60 for the fire operations and EMS operations combined. Thus our requirement of space is computed as below: 1. Office of the Fire Chief, (500 sq ft) 2. 14 cabins for senior officers (200 x 14 = 2800 sq. ft.) 3. A large hall of 3000 sq. ft for other officers 4. A large hall for supporting staff (3000 sq. ft.) 5. Other Support Facilities: The following facilities are needed for the smooth operation of the fire and EMS operations: 6. Classroom training facility (1000 sq. ft) 7. Emergency operation center (2000 sq. ft.) 8. Record room (500 sq ft.) 9. Locker room for staff (1000 sq ft) 10. Hall for storage of hydrants and other fire equipment: (1000 sq ft.) 11. Parking area for fleet of fire extinguisher vehicles and life support vehicles (5,000 sq ft.) 12. Storeroom for Emergency medical aid (500 sq ft.) 13. Underground water storage tanks (5000 sq ft.) 14. Toilets and rest rooms (1000 sq.ft) Except the area required for parking and water tanks, the other space requirement is 16300 sq ft. Hence, for a two floor construction, and a 50 % ratio of built up area, the total area requirement will be 26,300 sq. ft.2x 8150 + 5000 + 5000 = 26,300 sq ft.). Other important criteria: Green building design: During the design process, we have considered the energy efficiency of our design by adopting green technology. Green building or bio-climatic building is the practice of increasing the efficiency with which buildings and their sites use and harvest energy, water and materials and reducing building impacts on human health and the environment, through better design, construction, operation, maintenance and removal - the complete building life cycle. Green building is also sometimes known as sustainable building or environmental building, although there are slight differences in the definitions. The practice of green building can lead to benefits including reduced operating costs by increasing productivity and using less energy and water, improved public and occupant health due to improved indoor air quality , and reduced environmental impacts by, for example, lessening storm water runoff and the heat island effect. We shall adopt the principle of day lighting controls while designing our rooms and halls which will save considerable amount of electricity, and use of recycled water for irrigation and flushing of toilets as green building methods for our public safety facility. We shall also provide rainwater-harvesting facilities while designing the exterior parking and drive areas of the facility. Site Selection: The location of the site for development of the public Safety Facility should be suitable for covering the entire area serviced within the stipulated response time. It should also provide for efficient logistics as well as communication and interaction with nearby facilities of similar nature. Cost Analysis: An assessment of the land transactions in the city of Pinellas Park and nearby areas reveal the value of land to be around $26 per sq. foot as of 2002. Considering an inflation of 20% in the last 5 years the current land cost works out to $31.2 per sq ft. The total land required for the facility is 46000 sq. ft. Hence the land cost for the project is computed at $1.435 million. Similarly, taking the construction cost of Johnsons Library at $1.7 million for an area of 14200 sq ft. The rate per sq. ft for building construction works out to around $125 .The building plan area in our case is around 31000 sq. ft. excluding parking and water tank areas. Hence the cost of the building construction comes to $ 3.875 million The estimated cost of developing the parking and water storage areas at 50% rates as compared to building construction rates will work out to $0.94 million. The total cost of land and building construction in this case study is computed to be $ 6.225 million. This excludes cost of equipment necessary to operate the Safety Facility. Method of Funding The funding of public safety facilities is done by general funding from private resources like VFD or cash proffers or by debt financing through bond referendum from the public. The funding for Fire Department is done from federal funding through the Department of Homeland Security's Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program General fund: General funding from private sources like VFD or cash proffers can be done at slightly higher costs. The other alternative is to generate long-term debts through public bonds as described below: Debt financing through bond referendum: Bonds are a form of long-term borrowing used by most local governments to finance public facilities. Bond financing makes it possible to build public facilities with capacities based on future population estimates and to spread the cost over the useful life of the facilities. Because bonds constitute a future obligation of the county, law requires that the voters in the County approve bonds through referendum. People have the opportunity to vote either YES or NO on the questions. If the majority votes YES, the Board of supervisors will be authorized to sell bonds in the future to generate the funds for public safety. If the majority votes NO, the county cannot issue general obligation bonds to finance these projects, but may seek other forms of financing. Borrowing always entails interest costs. Since the interest earned by holders of municipal bonds is exempt from federal taxes, interest rates for these bonds generally are lower than the rate charged for private loans. BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Bond Referendum, www.faifaxcounty.gov/opa/bond/faq.htm 2. City of Sausalito, Public Safety Building. www.ci.sausalito.ca.us/public_safety/default.htm 3. Construction cost of Johnsons Library Building, www.sptimes.com/2002/07/28/southpinellas/construction_in_final.shtml 4. Funding of Fire station construction and remodeling, VFD-funding.com 5. Pinellas Park at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinellas_Park_Florida 6. Property values in Pinellas County, SouthPinellas/Pinellas_Park_propert.shtml 7. Public Safety Facility Design, Santa Monica, http://greenbuildings.santa-monica.org/ 8. Public Safety Facilities- Funding Sources, www.co.hanover.va.us/finance/adopted-04/CIP-Public_Safety.pdf- 9. US Fire Department, www.usfa.fema.govt Read More