The City of San Antonio’s new state-of-the-art emergency response center, known as the Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP), was recently completed by the Guido/Sundt joint venture and is now serving residents of San Antonio and surrounding Bexar County. The project team used its expertise to overcome a number of challenges while building the mission critical facility: meeting an aggressive schedule, ensuring redundancy of multiple building systems, and installing sophisticated communications equipment. The 40,000-square-foot dispatch center for fire, police and emergency services replaced the city’s former 9-1-1 call center.
Schedule:
The project had an exceptionally fast schedule of just 12 months. But before construction could even begin, the project team had demolish four existing buildings and six acres of 12-inch-thick concrete paving. Thanks to their careful planning, the demo work was completed in just one month and PSAP was completed on time. As a result, the city was able to disable the former call center and transfer emergency response services to the new facility without interruptions.
Systems Redundancy for 24/7 Operations:
The structure was designed to have a high degree of “survivability” in order to withstand natural disasters. In addition, all of the electrical, mechanical and communications systems are fully redundant so that it will never lose power or communication abilities.
• Four back-up generators will keep the PSAP functioning at 100 percent capacity if power is ever lost.
• The AC system is also fully redundant. Indoor temperatures would quickly rise to 150 degrees or higher because of the heat generated by people and equipment if the system ever malfunctioned.
• The building has two entry points for telephone and fiberoptic cables to ensure that there is never an interruption in emergency response services.
Communications Equipment:
Installing the PSAP’s sophisticated communications systems presented one of the biggest challenges to the project team. They had to coordinate all of the electronics, telephone and computer equipment that run to the center’s 115 dispatch stations to that they function perfectly without interfering with one another.