Government & Public
Public buildings answer to taxpayers, to agency and procurement standards (on GSA work, the PBS Core Building Standards that replaced P100 in 2025), and to the expectation that essential services keep running when the grid, the network, or the weather does not. We deliver MEP design, prepared for your engineer of record’s review, sized for real runtime, designed for lifecycle cost, and built for a public-works crew to maintain over the long term.
Built for Long-Term Public Service.
Civic work is governed differently: many of these are essential facilities that must stay operational during the event everyone else evacuates, and the bid set is reviewed against the owner's procurement requirements before bidding. We size emergency power to real runtime, hold dispatch and EOC environments through an outage, and select serviceable systems a municipal crew can maintain, with documented lifecycle assumptions and planned component replacement — in addenda-resistant bid documents, sealed by the licensed engineer of record on your project.
Emergency & Standby Power
Power that keeps essential services running when the grid drops.
- Emergency and standby systems engineered per NFPA 110 with the Type (restoration time), Class (runtime), and Level (criticality) the AHJ requires
- Generator plant sizing, on-site fuel storage, and transfer schemes coordinated with the utility service
- Selective coordination and arc-flash studies built into the documents for the emergency distribution
- Load separation of emergency, legally required standby, and optional standby loads per NEC Articles 700/701/702
- Critical Operations Power Systems per NEC Article 708 where the AHJ or a continuity-of-operations plan designates the facility (EOCs, 911 dispatch, designated critical infrastructure)
- Lightning protection and grounding per NFPA 780 for exposed and essential public structures
Dispatch & EOC Resilience
The 911 floor and emergency operations center have to outlast the event.
- Dispatch-room HVAC held within equipment limits per NFPA 1225 (formerly NFPA 1221), with EOCs designed to the same criteria where the owner specifies
- Redundant cooling and UPS-backed power engineered so the communications floor is designed to ride through single-component failures and loss of utility
- Continuity-of-operations design for essential facilities (Risk Category IV), to the continuity targets set by the owner
- Coordination of physical security and access control scope provided by specialty consultants
- Acoustically controlled mechanical routing so equipment noise stays off the dispatch floor
Public-Safety & Fleet HVAC
Apparatus bays, sally ports, and shops have ventilation needs a typical office building never sees.
- Vehicle exhaust source-capture and bay ventilation per NFPA 1550 (formerly NFPA 1500) for fire apparatus bays, and per the IMC for fleet repair shops
- Make-up air and CO/NO2 monitoring for apparatus bays, sally ports, and maintenance garages
- Hose-tower, decon, turnout-gear, and SCBA-room exhaust separated from living quarters
- Maintenance-first equipment access and redundancy for round-the-clock occupancy
- Zoning and DDC controls a public-works crew can actually operate and service
Durable Plumbing & Life Safety
Heavy-use public systems designed for hard, long-term use.
- Vandal-resistant, heavy-duty public fixtures — sensor-operated and metering faucets — with ADA/ABA clearances
- Water-conservation fixtures and rates meeting state mandates and IgCC where adopted
- Backflow prevention, grease and oil/sand interceptors for kitchens and fleet shops, plus hazard-based emergency eyewash and drench provisions where required, with equipment meeting ANSI/ISEA Z358.1
- Fire-alarm, emergency voice/alarm communication (EVACS) where required by the adopted code, mass notification driven by risk analysis, and egress coordination to NFPA 72 and NFPA 101
- Serviceable, accessible distribution planned for long-term public use
Procurement & Lifecycle
A bid set built for procurement review, not just plan review.
- Bid documents structured for public competitive bidding — clear, complete, and addenda-resistant
- Specifications and drawings cross-checked against each other before issue, substitution and “or-equal” language written to the owner's procurement rules, and equipment carried with a named basis of design plus acceptable alternates so bidders are pricing the same scope
- Compliance with GSA's PBS Core Building Standards on GSA projects (or P100 where it still governs an earlier project), and with the applicable agency and state facility standards on other federally or state-funded work
- Energy modeling to ASHRAE 90.1 / IECC, with lifecycle cost evaluated against the financial criteria set by the owner, for constrained public capital budgets
- Basis-of-design and equipment selections justified for value-engineering and public-records scrutiny
Yes. We engineer emergency and standby systems per NFPA 110 — selecting the correct Type (restoration time), Class (runtime), and Level (criticality) the AHJ requires — and separate emergency, legally required standby, and optional standby loads per NEC Articles 700, 701, and 702. Generator sizing, on-site fuel storage, transfer schemes, and selective coordination are built into the set so the facility is designed to ride through an outage. It is all documented behind the seal of the licensed engineer of record on your project.
Yes. We design dispatch-floor environments to NFPA 1225 (the consolidated successor to NFPA 1221), and EOCs to the same criteria where the owner specifies, holding HVAC within equipment limits with redundant cooling and UPS-backed power, so the communications floor is designed to ride through single-component failures and loss of utility. These are typically treated as essential facilities that need to keep operating through the event.
Apparatus bays need vehicle exhaust source-capture and bay ventilation aligned with NFPA 1550 (formerly NFPA 1500), because diesel exhaust is a documented carcinogen exposure for firefighters. We design direct source-capture at the tailpipe plus building-space filtration as a supplement, with make-up air and CO/NO2 monitoring. Hose-tower, decon, turnout-gear, and SCBA-room exhaust are kept separate from living quarters so contaminants stay out of the bunkroom.
We build bid documents for competitive public procurement — clear, complete, and addenda-resistant — so the set holds up to a procurement officer's review and limits costly addenda during bidding. On GSA projects we align to GSA's PBS Core Building Standards (or to P100 where it still governs an earlier project), and on other federally or state-funded work to the applicable agency and state facility standards, and we keep the basis of design defensible for value-engineering and public-records scrutiny.
Yes. We prioritize lifecycle cost and maintenance-first equipment access, selecting serviceable systems a municipal public-works crew can operate and service, with documented lifecycle assumptions and planned component replacement, rather than the lowest first-cost option. Energy modeling to ASHRAE 90.1 and the IECC, with lifecycle cost evaluated against the financial criteria set by the owner, helps keep operating costs defensible against constrained capital budgets.