Fire Station Design provided by the team at Summit Engineering.

Creative solutions the unique challenges of Fire Station Design

As an essential facility, fire station structures are part of a critical occupancy category. This category contains structures that are intended to remain operational in the event of extreme environmental loadings (Floods, Storms, Earthquakes, etc.). The occupancy category impacts the loads for which a structure must be designed with regard to snow, wind, and seismic forces. Beside these environmental loads, fire station design is unique due to the high floor to ceiling heights and long roof spans that are often required in the apparatus bay to allow for large vehicle maneuverability.

Our engineering service areas include:

• Residential – Single and Multi-Family
• Commercial and Industrial
• Institutional
• Municipal, State, and Federal
• Waterfront
• Wastewater and Water Treatment Tanks
• Seismic Analysis and Upgrades
• Cold-Formed Steel
• Aluminum Structures
• Retaining Walls
• Pre-Engineering Building Foundations
• Building Condition Assessments
• Peer Reviews
• Masonry Restoration
• Façade Restoration
• Forensic Engineering
• Insurance Claim Investigations
• Special Inspections
• Expert Witness
• Code Studies

Municipalities can choose a wide variety of ways to navigate the construction process of building a fire station. The two most common methods are Design-Bid-Build and Design-Build. Summit has experience with both types of project delivery methods. Summit provided the structural design under the Design-Build process for fire stations in:

• Brentwood, NH
• Nottingham, NH
• New Castle, NH, and other locations.

Summit was part of the design team for Design-Bid-Build fire stations for:

• Center Harbor, NH
• Hampton, NH
• Pelham, NH and other locations.

The Brentwood Fire Station was a design-build project located in Brentwood, NH. The new 10,000-SF fire station design employed 90-foot long wood roof trusses supported by tall wood-framed walls Summit’s engineers designed a creative truss bracing methodology enabling a column free apparatus bay in the new fire station. With the limited funds available to the town, Summit’s creative design allowed for the construction of a fully functioning 5-Bay fire station for under $2M.

Summit Engineering was the Engineer of Record (EOR) for the Pelham, NH fire station design, which employed the Design-Bid-Build project delivery method. The nearly 17,000-SF building housed six large vehicle bays and office/support areas. Summit designed the building which incorporated Insulated Concrete Form (ICF) walls, steel framed roof and mezzanines as well as cold formed steel interior bearings walls and roof trusses. This fire station design utilized all non-combustible materials.

In addition to fire station design and construction, Summit Engineering is experienced with institutional, commercial, industrial, medical and residential structures.