How do you find the right parcel if your facility needs to relocate or build a new station on a new site? Assume you have sites or areas of town where you want or need to locate, how do you find out which site is the right one? A few of the questions you might wrestle with — How big should the site be? What shape will work? What utilities are available? Will a single parcel or an assemblage of contiguous parcels work? How will it serve future needs?

Fire departments or municipalities often attempt to find property for a new facility without professional assistance. There is a method to find and qualify various sites for firematic and emergency service facilities that can help remove much of the guesswork from the selection process. However, let's be clear about exactly what the process is and what it isn't.

Fact from fiction

This process is not about response time mapping or mapping-based location analysis. It's not about Insurance Services Office response- time parameters for engine and ladder response. If there are serious questions of whether a site can qualify for ISO-based response times, or if it might affect your ISO ratings, you should look into response time mapping and analysis. There are qualified companies to do this work.

This site selection process is about qualifying sites to serve emergency services facilities. It's a subjective process based on professional experience and a field-tested set of guidelines. In addition, you may want your site to conform to the recommendations of either NFPA 1710 or 1720, Deployment of Fire Suppression Operations, Emergency Medical Operations and Special Operations to the Public by Career or Volunteer Fire Departments, respectively. While these standards recommend some response guidelines, they are not hard rules requiring response-time mapping and analysis.

Start the site selection process by organizing a small committee to provide leadership. A committee of three to five people works well. Look for leadership, good communication skills, positive attitudes and commitment to a common goal.

As one of its first duties, the committee should establish a consulting relationship with a qualified architectural firm. An architect qualified in the design of firematic facilities, or who specializes in site analysis and selection for emergency services facilities, can recommend services tailored to your specific needs. The architect will help define the prospective project's size and scope and thus begin to define the requirements of the land. The architect's services also may include an analysis of your current facility to determine if you really should relocate, a conceptual design of a new facility and other related services.

Your architect will help you sort through your options to determine what you actually need and establish both an action plan and timeline. It's important to recognize that this type of consulting is different from requesting proposals from architects to handle all phases of a proposed project.

To start the site selection, the committee must have the architect undertake an initial conceptual design to define the scope of the facility and uses of the land. This conceptual scope of work will lead to the facility's size and uses and, consequently, the amount of land needed for the building itself, training regimens, apparatus aprons, first responder parking for volunteer departments, public access and parking, open space, and community activities, among others.

To determine the size and scope of the project, the architect will help you develop a project program. The program will define your needs, describe firematic and rescue operations and activities within the building and on the site, identify future needs, and express the physical requirements of the building and site needed to accommodate them. Based on the program, the architect will conduct a space-usage analysis that predicts building and site size.

Several important things must be known up front to set minimum site criteria. If a fire department is all or partially volunteer staffed, then first-responder access and parking becomes critical. If the station will be partial or all drive-through or have dual-access bays, then additional land will be needed for apparatus aprons. There also are essential limitations such as total minimum usable land area, road frontage and workable topography.

The end result is a set of parameters specific to the client, based on the program, space-usage analysis and other critical information. Once the facility is defined in terms of its programmed size, scope, operations and needs, you're ready to embark on the site selection process.

Set the stage

Where do candidate sites come from in the first place? Generally clients identify available sites. At this stage of the process we work with tax maps that are readily available from the town assessor's office. We don't need detailed surveys, just the size, shape and location of each parcel. From the tax maps, the clients find areas of town that make “response” sense, looking for town-owned property and parcels they feel might be available for sale.

For a town in Massachusetts we used the program and resulting space-usage analysis to define minimum site size, road frontage requirements and minimum dimensions to begin identifying a list of sites. The town used this information to scan tax maps and pick any available parcel in a certain area of town, approximately 120 parcels. Using our set of parameters, they were able whittle the list down to approximately 12 sites. Together we then chose six sites to fully evaluate.

We employ a two-stage site review process to determine a parcel's usability. The first stage of evaluation involves attributes applicable to any parcel of land. These land/site attributes include parcel size, road frontage and access, topography cut/fill, accessibility (ability of apparatus to leave the site quickly regardless of traffic patterns, congestion, or natural disasters that may close railroad crossings or bridges), available utilities, storm-water drainage, wetlands, other detrimental natural features (flood plains, rock or poor soil), demolition hazards, and underground waste or hazardous materials.

We assess each individual site through direct observation, discussions with the public works department and utility companies, photographs, and anecdotal information from the client. In addition, based on the geographic area, we customize the land/site attributes. Some locales may not need a wetland category but rather a historical significance category.

We then assign a numerical score of each attribute from 1 to 10, 1 being the lowest score and 10 being the highest. Some of these issues may be subjective, such as accessibility. Based on our professional experience and judgment, we assign values that are both relative to the other sites and a baseline value. For example, if a site has all utilities available at the road, it will receive a utilities score of 10. If another site is missing natural-gas service at the road but needs only a few hundred-foot extension for service, it might receive a score of 9.

We create a matrix of the sites with their the land/site attributes and scores (see page 63). After each attribute is evaluated and numerically scored, we add all the attribute scores and give the sites their first subtotal score and ranking. This is a give-and-take process that involves the client's input for review and feedback.

Costs and consequences

The second stage of evaluation involves criteria applicable to a parcel of land that will specifically be the site for an emergency services facility. This is a subjective category developed for those attributes specific to these facilities. We evaluate features and issues that deal with a parcel's ability to hold a fire station emergency service facility or medical/ambulance squad.

These building/firematic issues include traffic separation (ingress/egress and moving on and off the site), responder parking, ease of apparatus exiting/returning, drive-through capability, build-ability, land available around the building, responder time to the station (for volunteer departments this is a subjective anecdotal analysis based on information and opinions provided by the client), response time to potential events (a subjective anecdotal analysis based on information and opinions provided by the client), acquisition cost, and potential negative reaction (the client's opinion of the probable level of objections to be raised by neighbors, advocacy groups or other parties).

We then generate a second matrix of the building/firematic issues and scores. We carry over the first set of scores, add the second set of scores and give the sites a total score and rank. Now the sites are ranked based on their total score.

Now it's time for some graphic proof that the top-ranked sites do in fact work for your facility. We create conceptual layouts using the tax maps to see graphically how a particular site works. For a client in upstate New York we were able to show that an assemblage of four parcels was more than adequate for their programmed needs as opposed to the eight parcels the client anticipated purchasing, thereby saving them several hundred thousand dollars.

After we all agree on the best parcel and layout, we develop a more detailed schematic design and layout. This usually requires a floor plan, building elevations and a more detailed site plan. We prefer to have at least a metes and bounds survey for this stage of design. If the site has unusual or severe topography, flood plains, wetlands, or extreme features, we will need the survey to depict them.

We put all the information together in report form as a deliverable to the client. For municipal or public clients, we also typically present our findings and methodology in public hearings. Keeping the process open, well communicated to all stakeholders with plenty of feedback, generally ensures greater acceptance for the final choice.

Let's look at a sample project and see how this process comes together as a site plan. Take a look at the site drawing on page 62. This volunteer station has a large community meeting hall on the second floor with significant public parking, first-responder parking requirements, storm drainage needs, view control, traffic separation due to the major highway it fronts, drive-through capability and a customized site category for FAA noise limits due to its proximity to an airport. As a public building, FAA noise guidelines became a factor in the six sites that were evaluated for this client.

You can now embark on your land purchase with confidence knowing that your facility will fit, operate correctly on the site and have room for growth or other activities. In the last few years we have seen a trend where emergency services facilities are including community activity space both in the building and on the site. Make sure that your program includes these important concepts and any other uses for your site such as training or future bays.

Once you have the property under control, you can continue the design process to get your building designed and built.

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A graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Dennis Ross, AIA, has nearly 30 years' experience in architectural design, real-estate development and construction management. He is a member of several architectural associations and is a registered architect in New York, Vermont, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Virginia, Michigan, Maryland, Tennessee, Colorado and Missouri.

Choosing the Right Site

Rating: 10 - Highest 1 - Lowest
Land	Existing Site	Existing Site Plus Adjacent	Aubuchon Hardware Site	Pleasant — Webster Assemblage	Pleasant — Stanwood Assemblage	Weeds Property	Fox Lumber	Former Armory
Site #	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
Size & Shape	3	7	8	10	6	3	10	5
Road Frontage & Access	1	10	5	10	7	5	10	6
Topography Cut/Fill	8	10	10	8	4	8	8	10
Accessibility	8	10	5	10	3	8	8	8
Utilities	7	7	7	7	7	7	7	9
Drainage	8	10	10	10	10	8	8	8
Detrimental Natural Features	10	5	8	10	10	8	10	5
Demolition Hazards	10	10	10	10	10	10	10	10
Underground Waste/Hazmat	5	3	3	2	3	4	3	5
Land/Site Points	60	72	66	77	60	61	74	66
Initial Rank	8	3	4	1	7	6	2	5

Building
Site #	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
Initial Rank	8	3	4	1	7	6	2	5
Traffic Separation	10	10	4	10	3	3	10	4
Parking	5	10	8	10	5	4	10	5
Ease of Apparatus Exiting/Returning	1	10	4	10	2	3	10	5
Drive-Through Capability	1	10	5	10	2	8	10	9
Build Ability	1	10	9	10	4	6	10	10
Land Available Around Building	1	7	8	10	1	1	10	3
Response Time to Potential Events	10	10	10	10	10	7	7	8
Acquisition Cost	10	4	5	1	6	5	5	8
Potential Negative Reaction	10	10	10	5	5	10	10	10
Building/Firematic Points	49	81	63	76	38	47	82	62
Total Points	109	153	129	153	98	108	156	128
Final Rank	6	2	4	3	8	7	1	5

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