Contra Costa County Office of the Sheriff Headquarters & EOC

Contra Costa County Office of the Sheriff Headquarters & EOC

Workplaces should enrich people’s work life, no matter their profession. The workplace innovations that have improved private sector office environments—collaboration, stress-reduction, social connectivity—should also enrich public safety workplaces. Law enforcement and emergency operations environments are dynamic and high-stress, and they can benefit greatly from contemporary emphasis on employee well-being, team-building, adaptability and resilience.

SOCIAL TERRITORIES DEFINE OPERATIONAL SPACES

This project builds upon contemporary workplace research by creating an innovative, flexible and user-centric public safety work environment. This design prioritizes operational social territories to make architecture out of the particularities of social engagement. Each social territory is designed with a unique strategy for accommodating flexibility, daylighting, technology, group interaction, and its relationship to the outdoors. Within this new 38,200 sf headquarters building, each of the building’s social territories function like a smaller building-within-a-building, prioritizing the ability to focus, collaborate, gather, and connect.

The design features these social territories as discreet architectural volumes, sculpted to the operational needs of their programs. The critical-facility emergency operations center thrives as an armature for collaboration, with a technology-rich, flexible open floor ringed by break-out rooms. The multi-use training and event hall facilitates social gathering through an indoor/outdoor, adaptable space anchored by a redwood grove. Daylight and views of nature increase workplace focus in the administration and command staff areas, utilizing soft ambient daylight and an introverted office volume to optimize solo work. To connect, a shaded-plaza entry trellis pinpoints the confluence of site and building circulation, engaging the shared dining and fitness areas, and functioning as a campus crossroads.

New public safety projects that incorporate contemporary workplace innovations can validate the unique needs of officers, command staff and emergency responders. By prioritizing productive connectivity between people, and between people and nature, the public safety work environment will see immediate operational and personnel benefits.

DETAILS

The new Contra Costa County Office of the Sheriff Headquarters and Emergency Operations Center (HQ/EOC) is a 38,200 square foot, two-story LEED Gold headquarters building within a larger reconfigured 4.46 acre campus master plan.

The HQ/EOC houses the Office of the Sheriff’s command staff, the County’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC), the Sheriff’s Administration offices, as well as a flexible event space, a commercial kitchen, a shared break area, and a fitness room. The building is an essential services facility, designed to for immediate post-disaster occupancy. It is a steel moment frame structure, with ballistic resistant, profiled and smooth precast concrete panels, and ballistic windows; the white shade structures are laser-cut painted steel plate.

The overall redesign campus is 4.5 acres, and the project included the adaptive reuse of the existing EOC building as a new training facility. The site is configured for public parking, high security staff parking, photo-voltaic panel arrays, stormwater retention and bio-filtration areas, a redwood grove, and improved access to the array of existing operational buildings in the area.