Fire Station Design to Attract and Retain Members
A successful fire station must serve a wide variety of functions: maintenance and storage of firefighting vehicles and equipment, administrative offices, training rooms, community education, hazardous materials storage, lodging and recreation, food preparation.
However, with the ranks of volunteer firefighters shrinking, one of the most important features of fire station design may be the quality of life that attracts new members and retains existing ones.
Design elements that focus on quality of life issues for firefighters, for example, individual sleeping quarters, are increasingly important to maintaining unit strength and cohesion.
Fire stations are occupied 24 hours a day, seven days a week. A spartan environment won’t attract new members or give current members much reason to stay. It is necessary to provide a comfortable environment for today’s firefighter. We’re not talking about indulgent luxury items, nor are we talking about cots in the bedrooms.
It’s not the expense that stops departments from including design elements that attract and retain members, it’s the mindset. Firefighters are a resilient and independent group. If they are left to their own devices in suggesting design features for a new station, they will provide better results for their team than for themselves. Taking care of the equipment your life depends on is not a flaw. However, there is no reason to ignore the comfort and living conditions of the most important team of any station: the firefighter.
The baseline for the residential area of a fire station is to provide each firefighter with a comfortable living environment to sleep, work, and store personal items. In sleeping areas, budget permitting, each firefighter should have separate sleeping quarters. It makes sense to share living space between shifts so that the room always has an assigned occupant in the building. When sharing rooms between shifts, a secure locker must be provided for each fighter assigned to the room. Assigned members may share a bed, nightstand, and desk each shift. The desk should offer the same amount of drawer space for each shift.
Ban those drab institutional grays and beige color schemes from the living room and communal areas like the TV room and family room. You can, and perhaps should, use institutional colors and finishes throughout the equipment compartment and storage areas. But as for living rooms, if you wouldn’t paint your own living room battleship gray, don’t use battleship gray for the common rooms and community spaces of the apartment. And if you would use battleship gray at home, put someone else in charge of your station’s color scheme.
Plenty of natural light is a cost-effective way to illuminate the living and working spaces of a fire station. Those living and working areas must be generous and access points throughout the building must facilitate quick transitions from living spaces to egress.
It’s a good idea to separate the noisy game room from the bunk beds and bedrooms. And considering the amount of training today’s firefighters must complete, why not provide an area of study? A few bookshelves with course materials, a Wi-Fi Internet connection, and reading lamps transform a conference room into a study/library for relatively little cost.
Day rooms are often forced to accommodate kitchen, dining, and recreation functions. Certainly, kitchen and dining functions are easily combined. The recreation function in that space is usually a secondary function that is better off in a separate area. Consider swapping a conference room or meeting space for a recreation area. The dining area easily converts to meeting or training space when flexibility is needed.
What to put in that ‘extra’ recreational space? How about a fitness room? Features such as a gym will attract many potential and existing members and do not have to be fully furnished from day one. Departments can start with a set of relatively inexpensive weights and mats and go from there with donations or fundraising efforts.
Design features can attract and retain members if:
- Focus on quality of life issues for firefighters
- The dwellings provide privacy for every firefighter on every shift.
- Colors and finishes clearly delimit living and common areas from work areas
- Functions are logically separated
- Amenities provided: study area, Wi-Fi, fitness room…
By design, treat the firefighter environment as a way to retain and attract members and you will create a comfortable and welcoming home away from home for your team.