SCHRADERGROUP Principal Co-presents at AIA Academy of Architecture for Justice Fall Conference

SCHRADERGROUP (SG) managing principal David Schrader, AIA, LEED AP, co-presented at the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Academy of Architecture for Justice (AAJ) 2015 fall conference held in Miami, Florida. The session, entitled “The Next Generation of Emergency Communication and Operation Centers: Consolidating Services,” discussed the critical nature of the consolidated functions of facilities at municipal, parish, county and state levels throughout the country.

Continued weather trends as well as concerns for domestic and national threats have heightened the status of emergency facilities and increased the number of services provided by these organizations. With an increased focus on emergency preparedness, the required technical and communication connectivity of the various supported agencies is challenging prior approaches to facility design. Further, increased need to staff, maintain and support these functions has brought the facilities closer to the urban fabric. The program presented at the AIA AAJ conference demonstrated recent design innovations developed to meet changing concerns through the examination of three recently built consolidated emergency response facilities.

Learning objectives for the session included:

1. Understanding the challenges of the multiple client agencies housed within the next generation of facility.
2. Discussing the code applications and recommendations utilized to develop contemporary emergency response centers.
3. Developing a sense of the hardening requirements and system redundancies required of a facility of this type.
4. Understanding the forces driving the consolidation of these services with other municipal functions.

One of the projects used as a case study for the presentation, the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA) State Emergency Operations Center, is designed by SG and currently nearing completion of construction. The project was featured in Justice Facilities Review 2014, published by the American Institute of Architects Academy of Architecture for Justice. For more information about the PEMA State Emergency Operations Center, please visit our website.