Fire & Rescue Services

Delivering fire & rescue services

Modern and resilient, life-saving environments to protect our communities

Our fire and rescue services across the UK are adapting to increasing and more complex risk profiles and critical emergency incident demands, with incidents rising by 22% in England in the last decade alone. This work is critical, as fire and rescue services teams to continue to adapt and respond to the needs of their local community risk management plans.

Our work with clients such as Scottish Fire and Rescue, London Fire Brigade and Hampshire Fire & Rescue show a clear picture. Fire authorities are addressing modernisation issues in estates of around 30-60 years old at pace, focusing on facilities that strengthen operational capability, enable advanced training for their workforce, and provide safe and compliant environments for the fire and rescue teams who protect our communities every day.

Preston Circus Feb 2024 (32) — Refurbishment of Preston Circus Fire Station, London

20Z016_medium — Private rooms and facilities at Inverness Fire Station

Image of the rear of the Ramsgate Fire Station which shows the drill tower — Training facilities at Ramsgate Fire Station

Morgan Sindall’s fire and rescue experience

Our journey with our fire and rescue customers has seen our business deliver a level of technical capability to multiple fire and rescue estates, in the last 10 years Morgan Sindall Construction have delivered 20 projects for fire & rescue services across the UK. Works have included:

Advanced live-fire training facilities
Multi-scenario drill towers
Specialist ventilation systems
Retrofitting and re-design of existing stations
Robust red‑amber‑green decontamination routes designed to protect firefighter health
Energy‑efficient BREEAM Excellent buildings utilising renewable technologies and supporting long‑term operational performance
Addressing challenges associated with developing on brownfield sites
Working with multiple blue light stakeholders such as ambulance services or the red cross in addition to fire & rescue crews, who are all co-locating in one environment

Live environments

Working in a live fire and rescue environment

Remaining fully-operational is of the utmost importance to many of our customers and so working in complex live environments has been achieved in ways that meet our clients' unique requirements – solutions have included carefully sequenced works, temporary facilities and close collaboration with local fire crews.

Our combination of technical capability and trusted partnerships with our stakeholders has ensured vital emergency services have remained fully operational at every stage of construction.

Meeting the logistic challenge: Cosham Fire Station

During the construction of the fire station, one of the biggest challenges the team faced was the location of the project. The project was located on a busy five lane intersection, whereby three of the lanes’ head towards a large roundabout and the other two lanes take you away from the roundabout. Due to this, it was important for the project team to devise a robust traffic management strategy to mitigate as much disruption as possible in this area.

Read more about this project: Cosham Fire Station

Protecting people

Protecting those who protect our communities

Many existing spaces in the fire and rescue services are to be redesigned to ensure compliance with guidelines around decontamination. In addition, over 8% of the workforce are female so many services are retrofitting their facilities so that they are inclusive and continue to welcome a more diverse workforce.

The entire design of the fire and rescue services at Bishops Waltham and Cosham were centred on the need for enhanced decontamination facilities for the fire fighters, who through their work are exposed to large amounts of toxins. Individualised environments were also important to maintain privacy and inclusion for all the workforce.

Designing specialist decontamination solutions

The facilities were designed to follow a red-amber-green strategy, where those returning from duty entered a red zone first, where their overalls can be safely taken off and placed in suitable washing apparatus, Moving to an amber zone, where they could have a shower and get changed, and finally a green zone, where they could rest, recuperate or re-engage in other work activity.

Read more about these projects: Cosham Fire Station, Bishop's Waltham Fire Station

Building resilience

Fire stations are more than just operational bases; they have long been anchors of community engagement. The combination of our clients and our own social value objectives, using construction as the catalyst has resulted in hugely positive outcomes that are driving community growth and resilience.

Early stakeholder engagement to identify localised needs

As part of four projects for the Scottish Fire & Rescue Service the team worked with the customer to create a social value charter to outline the key objectives for the projects.

From this, a series of local labour and SME engagement, to impactful education, employment and community engagement initiatives were devised, resulting in 26% return in social value.

The results were broken down further:

£1.8m of social value reinvested in local area
£28,600 spent with Social Enterprises
25 apprentice weeks
30 volunteering hours
£4,800 in charitable donations

From blood drives to bikes, food growing to fitness, the team really did get stuck into the local community. Take a look at the range of activities they undertook during construction.