Fencing has been erected and site preparation is underway at a nearly one-acre parcel of property along City Gate Boulevard in the north end of Langford, B.C., where a $19.3-million Capital Region Emergency Services Telecommunications (CREST) building is set to be built.
The 14,000-square-foot building will have a single-storey section constructed mostly of mass timber that will serve as an administrative area. There will also be a two-storey warehouse area made of steel. It will be a purpose-built structure designed to withstand the effects of an earthquake.
“We just broke ground, I would say, about three weeks ago and had to do some light blasting to level out the site,” says CREST general manager Gord Horth. “It’s a post-seismic building, so we’re in the process of doing some drilling to install some rock anchors that will be part of the foundation. The completion timeline is probably late summer of 2025.”
CREST is an agency that provides area communications for police, fire and other emergency services.
In 2020, CREST completed a $24.5 million region-wide technology upgrade to a digital P25 network that is considered a North American standard of public safety excellence.
The region’s CREST facilities are presently in three separate locations. There is a main office on West Shore Parkway, an operations centre on the top floor of the West Shore RCMP headquarters, as well as warehouse and other rented space in the region for radios and equipment.
Once completed, all services will be consolidated in the new post-seismic building. It will ensure emergency response communications will not be interrupted in the event of a large-scale natural disaster affecting the area.
More than 50 emergency response and public service agencies rely upon the CREST network. The agencies include 25 fire departments and six police forces. Other services include ambulance, transit, conservation officers, and security personnel at the B.C. legislature. More than 3,000 frontline emergency responders rely on the CREST network for communications.
In 2023, the network handled more than 10 million individual transmissions with a nearly-100-per-cent efficiency rate – one transmission every three seconds.
Engineering firm Stantec is guiding CREST through the building process. Construction project management was awarded to Durwest in 2023.
Present work includes installing the rock anchors to secure the structure to the bedrock. The building will have an uninterrupted power supply consisting of a backup generator and other components.
“It’s built on a slab,” explains Horth. “The ground has been levelled and there is solid bedrock and crush around. It’s a very easy site to build on because we’re not going down.”
Chosen for its accessibility, the site will consolidate critical public safety assets, ensuring uninterrupted emergency communications.
A 47-metre-tall monopole with a six-foot-diameter base will also be installed at the building to boost emergency communications and connect to responders throughout the West Shore area. The pole had to be high enough to rise above surroundings buildings and fir trees in the area.
Tenders for the building were split into three packages. The first to be awarded was a tender for the rock anchors and earthworks, and concrete and steel works. The second was for mechanical, electrical and mass timber work as well as the contract for structural steel, cladding and roofing. The final contract to go to tender will be for landscaping work on the property.
According to Horth, a number of LEED features will be incorporated into the building. Landscapers will also use drought-resistant plants and smaller trees.
The site of the new building was purchased for $1.8 million in 2022. The venture is being financed by the Municipal Finance Authority at lower borrowing rates. Cash-flow projections indicate the project can be completed within a board-approved five-year financial plan without increasing user agency levies.
The CREST system is important to the region because it enables first responders from various agencies to speak directly to each other rather than having to go through a dispatcher. On the green side, CREST sites are lower emitters of electromagnetic energy than a personal cellphone, or a household microwave oven.
“Having our telecommunications infrastructure located in a purpose-built, post-disaster building is simply an emergency management best practice,” Langford Fire Rescue Department Chief Chris Aubrey says. “This project is a strategic investment and will benefit the region and its residents for many years to come.”
Victoria Police Department Chief Del Manak says the region has made a smart investment by updating and modernizing the CREST emergency communications platform.
“For first responder agencies, like the Victoria Police Department, protecting that investment is vital.”
Recent Comments