Project Summary

Bonsai Engineering has been tasked with designing a new Station 70 firehouse for Logan City. The current Station 70 is nearly 50 years old and not considered seismically safe due to its unreinforced masonry walls. Logan City has acquired property on the corner of 200 N and 100 E for the new firehouse. Bonsai Engineering’s main focus is the structural design of the new firehouse, as well as certain aspects of the site design including retaining wall design, and a storm water drainage plan. Logan City provided a request for proposal that outlined all the requirements they have for the new firehouse.

Alternatives

Several alternatives were considered for the design of Station 70. Creating a feasible layout proved to be challenging because of the small size of the lot where the new fire station was to be built. The following images are concept drawings of four layout options that were considered as four of the alternatives. Each layout had both a different building layout and a different site layout that changed where the driveways and parking spaces were. Keeping the existing firehouse and doing nothing was also considered as an alternative.

Criteria and Decision Matrix

Bonsai Engineering worked with Logan City to create a system for rating the design alternatives. The criteria of the rating system are labeled below in the Pugh Matrix show. Each alternative was rated on whether or not it met the requirements put forward by Logan City. The Layout 3 alternative met all the requirements so it was the one that was selected for final design.

Selected Alternative

Layout 3 is the alternative which fulfills all of the constraints given in the RFP:

• Pull Through bays with access to 200 North
• Storage with direct access to apparatus bays
• 20 passenger vehicle parking spaces
• Access to both 200 N and 100 E
• Living quarters with direct access to bays
• Space for all administration offices and conference rooms

Final Design

RAM Structural was chosen for a firehouse station due to its capabilities in designing and analyzing structural systems for steel buildings. Essential public buildings including fire stations are designed to a higher standard to remain functional after catastrophic events such as strong winds and earthquakes. This advanced software allowed us to account for the codes and standards required for the structure such as this fire station. It helped us design the beams and columns both in the gravity design and the lateral force resisting system.

Revit was used to model a firehouse because it is a comprehensive Building Information Modeling (BIM) software that allows for detailed and accurate modeling of building structures and systems. Firehouses are complex buildings that require a high level of coordination between various systems and Revit allows for easy coordination of the structural design.

Steel framing was used for this project because of its capability for accommodating large open areas like the fire truck bays as well as its ease and timeliness of construction.

A moment frame design was implemented for the lateral resisting force system because it allows for large openings between the columns like the large garage doors. A proprietary system called Side Plate was specified for the beam to column connections in the moment frame because of the economic value that their product adds to the project.

Acknowledgements

A special thanks to all those who provided guidance and assistance in this project.

• Troy Dye, S.E. ARW Engineers
• Alex Oliphant, P.E. Logan City
• Justin Naser, S.E. ARW Engineers
• Austin Ball, P.E. USU
• Logan City