WSKF Architects continues to deliver design breakthroughs focused on current and emerging facility needs.

How We Advance Public Safety Facility Design

WSKF Architects has designed public safety facilities for more than three decades focusing on current and emerging demands and challenges facing first responders.
Today we continue to deliver design innovations and breakthroughs to mitigate risks, improve functionality and flexibility, and ensure long-term facility performance and durability.

We engage agency leadership and front-line staff, interact with and gain insights from public safety researchers and experts, and each project brings us lessons in how to elevate our work and better serve fire, EMS, police, dispatch and other professionals.
What sets us apart are the consistent results we deliver in some critical areas of facility design.

High Performance – Space planning for today and long term. Layout that is thought through to provide flexibility to accommodate evolving agency and staff needs. Exterior and interior material choices that provide durability and reduce long-term operational and maintenance costs.

Delivering ROI and Smart Design – Today’s agencies are data driven as seen in incident volume, turnout efficiency and other measures. That’s why we focus on design advancements that provide tangible return on investment regarding operational needs and challenges. For example, chain of custody requirements for police or supporting decon practices and turnout efficiency for fire crews.

Facility Resilience – Designing not only for storm resistance but also flood resistance, power outages and disruptions, heat waves, physical security of staff and visitors.

Staff Resilience – Forward-thinking design strategies to mitigate job-related stresses by creating a calming and restorative work and living environment. Design that achieves this through layout, material choices, color palette, use of sound, quiet rooms and other elements. Such investments can help advance broader agency goals related to staff satisfaction, mental and physical health, morale and reducing turnover.

Crackyl, a magazine focused on fire fighter health and lifestyles, featured WSKF Architects in a 2022 article on best practices in facility design for crew health and wellness.