Greater Harris County 9 1 1 Facility
Houston, Texas
Construction Cost: $16M
Completion Date: 2009
LEED CERTIFICATION: LEED-NC SILVER
The Greater Harris County 9-1-1 Emergency Network (GHC) selected PGAL to design their new 9-1-1 facility and administration headquarters on Fairbanks North Houston Road across from the Sam Houston Race Track. The48,600SF facility will house training, administrative, 9-1-1 support and communications components. It will also function as a back-up emergency communications location for all the Networks Public Safety Answer Point (PSAP) facilities. As such, it is designed as a mission-critical, essential facility.
The security system includes surveillance, access control, vehicle gates with AVI and call stations. The security system used IP cameras and Edge card readers utilizing PoE technology.Biometrics card readers were placed atlocations of criticaloperation components of the building. A command center was established inside the facility for 24 hour monitoring of the system. The site design is layered to protect the primary structure from exterior security threats.Building design is also layered to protect the critical components, placingthe most critical componentsat the core of the building with layered security access checkpoints.
The Mechanical/Electrical/Plumbing system was designed with double redundancy for self sustaining during power failure caused by man made or natural catastrophes. The system was designed to withstand multiple failure points.
The site is located outside of the 100 year flood plain,in addition the building pad was raised 3.5 feet over existing grade, with on site storm detention to prevent any potential flooding.