Cleveland Fire and Rescue Headquarters Building

The HQ building formed the main administration hub for CFRS as well as providing a training centre in Hartlepool. The building covers approximately 3,000m²  providing CFRS a flexible environment across two floors by providing open plan office areas, community facilities and training space.

The centre was designed to maximise the amount of daylight to enter the building and features extensive curtain walling to its façade and a striking full height atrium, with an outdoor terraced area at first floor level.

The challenge for the services design was to ensure that, whilst the ‘architectural’ vision was for natural daylight and large sections of glazing, that internal comfort conditions could be achieved.

This also required significant thermal modelling and thermal comfort analysis during the detailed design stages to ensure overheating, which was a major risk, was designed out and where this wasn’t possible, the introduction external brise soleil, overhangs and / or internal blinds considered.

The centre will also include other facilities such a café located on the ground floor, break out areas and a gymnasium, with highly-flexible training space featuring moveable partition wall structures to accommodate larger or small groups.

Project issues and lessons learnt:

This project was proposed initially to be a full BIM Level 2 scheme however, the Main Contractor and Client did not have adequate capability to work with the design team to ensure that a Level 2 scheme could be delivered. Early understanding of the overall teams capability is essential for Level 2 schemes.