FAQ
Essential Facility Questions
Written for agencies, districts and municipal owners.
The facility type, whether it is a new build or a hardening project, and the procurement route. That is enough to start.
FAQ
Essential and emergency facilities in Florida
- Is it just a stronger building?
- No. The objective is that it keeps functioning.
- What should be defined first?
- Duration, occupancy and which functions must continue.
- Why does one opening matter?
- A breach pressurizes the building from inside.
- What counts as an opening?
- Windows, all doors, hatches, skylights, louvres and service penetrations.
- Where do protective assemblies fail?
- At the attachment.
- Can assembly components be substituted?
- No.
- How big should the generator be?
- Sized to what has to run, including cooling.
- How much fuel?
- Enough for the realistic duration without resupply.
- Where should generation sit?
- Above flood elevation, with fuel and switchgear.
- Is cooling optional?
- In Florida it is a habitability requirement.
- What makes redundancy real?
- Physically separated paths.
- What gets missed in hardening?
- Hatches, louvres, rooftop equipment and overhead doors.
- Is public procurement different?
- Prescribed route, formal changes, scrutinized documentation.
- Can changes be agreed informally?
- They should not be.
- Is this code advice?
- No. Your design professional and the authority decide.
Still not answered?
Call (954) 807-3208. Tell us the facility type and whether it is new build or hardening.
What we build
Fire Stations
Apparatus bays, living quarters and a structure that has to launch a response during the event everybody else is sheltering from.
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EMS Facilities
Ambulance bays, supply and medication storage, crew quarters, and a layout that does not cost seconds on the way out.
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Emergency Operations Centers
Where a county or city coordinates its response. It has to be habitable, powered, connected and staffed through the worst of it.
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Shelters
Purpose-built shelters and buildings — frequently schools — designed or retrofitted to shelter standard.
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Utility & Public Works
Water and wastewater facilities, pump stations, fleet and public works buildings — infrastructure that has to run through and after an event.
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Hardening Existing Buildings
Upgrading an existing facility toward an operational standard, where the value is entirely in finding what will fail first.
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Next step
Find out what is actually wrong with it.
An inspection, photographs of what we found, and a written scope. If the honest answer is that it can wait another season, that is the answer you will get.