| Volume 1, Number 1 Summer 1999 |
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Building or remodeling a vehicle maintenance facility can be one of the biggest projects a fleet administrator ever undertakes. A lot of questions will arise. Who can a fleet administrator turn to? Who can offer advice on consultants, equipment, challenges, and pitfalls of the design and construction process?
Answer: Veterans of the process.
Someone who has been through the design and construction process is an invaluable source of information for any manager considering building a new facility or remodeling an existing one. These people can offer a wealth of information and advice on design features, selecting equipment, or even handling public interface because they've all been there.
Here are thoughts of four such people who have operated or built facilities that are as diverse as the cities they serve. Each has successfully managed a new construction or remodeling project recently and has first-hand experience to share.
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Stephen Watt
Facilities Engineer
Long Beach Transit
Long Beach, California
For Steve Watt, facilities engineer of Long Beach Transit in Long Beach, California, his challenge was updating a facility built in the early 1970s with innovations of the 1990s. "We needed to expand our bus fleet from 140 to 200, which meant adding repair bays, a new service and clean building, a new parts warehouse, new bus washers, expanded administrative offices, and additional bus parking." Watt found that undertaking a remodeling job is a challenge. Business as usual had to continue while the building was being renovated.
Watt advises other administrators to include in the design as much storage space as possible. "It always seems you run out of warehouse space no matter how much you plan. Before you know it, you've filled it up and you're out of space."
One of Watt's favorite features of the remodeled facility was the service and clean area. "It is one of the most compact service islands around. In a 50-foot-wide by 240-foot-long area, it's possible to inspect the brakes, extract fares, fuel the vehicle, clean the interior, and wash the exterior. At other properties, these functions may be spread out over several stations, but existing site conditions mandated a compact design."
Watt advises that the fleet manager make sure the facility design fits operational needs. "No two maintenance facilities work the same way. Each is highly personalized and reflects the experiences of the managers and supervisors. A fair weather California facility will have different needs than a facility in Michigan with extremes in seasons.
"Also, try to predict future trends. The cost of 'clean water' and energy conservation were issues for us. A facility that's designed to reclaim water and be frugal with electricity will be in better shape down the road if sanitation fees and utility costs escalate. The facility structure also should be adaptable to change in the type of fuel used in the buses and characteristics of that fuel."
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Fred Ohene
Senior Civil Engineer
Regional Transportation Commission of Clark County
Las Vegas, Nevada
The Regional Transportation Commission of Clark County's (RTC) transit system, Citizens Area Transit (CAT), in Las Vegas, Nevada, has experienced tremendous growth over the past few years. Currently, the fixed route operates out of an interim facility designed for a capacity of 120 buses. The RTC is developing new bus maintenance facilities for CAT's fixed route and paratransit operations, referred to as the Integrated Bus Maintenance Facilities (IBMF). Fred Ohene, RTC's Senior Civil Engineer, is project manager for the IBMF project.
The design phase is complete and the project currently under construction. Located on a 36-acre site in the City of North Las Vegas, the project consists of developing a 250-bus fixed route facility and a separate 150-bus paratransit facility. Both facilities will serve as the central repair shop for major overhaul, unit rebuild, and body work. Additional functional areas of the fixed route facility consist of administration, operations, maintenance, fueling, washing, vault/farebox retrieval, and parking for buses, employees, and visitors. The paratransit facility has the same functional areas except vault/farebox retrieval. A commercial drivers license (CDL) training course will be constructed adjacent to both facilities. The CDL course will be shared by both facilities.
Don Leidy of Maintenance Design Group (MDG) analyzed existing fixed route transit and paratransit vehicle maintenance facilities, developed facility program requirements for future system expansion, evaluated alternative methods of providing maintenance, evaluated potential sites, provided master planning for selected sites, and prepared an environmental assessment for selected sites for the assignment.
Ohene spent a good portion of his time on the civil engineering and overall engineering design portions of the project. "We wanted to provide very good drainage for the site while making certain there were no steep slopes on the bus parking areas to cause parked buses to roll."
The RTC hired design consultants and facility design specialists from various parts of the country. Ohene found that, from an owner's standpoint, it took a little extra effort to coordinate the project team and various project requirements. "In the end, the extra effort was worth it. We ended up with a quality design," he says.
"There's nothing I'd really change," Ohene continues. "We allowed the public to provide comments on the project and worked with various RTC committees, including the Citizens Advisory Committee. Very few changes had to be made based on the comments we received. We also toured the Denver RTD facilities, and from that tour, we realized we had overlooked the importance of interior signage and graphics, so we included it in our design."
Very good coordination of sub-consultants is the key to the success of a project of this magnitude. "Project coordination meetings are vital to ensure that all the design team disciplines are working together," Ohene advises. To facilitate communication and provide a good basis for design, the RTC staff and the design team collaborated in producing a document-the Conceptual Design Report-prior to the detailed design effort that outlined all the parameters for the project.
Other aspects of the design phase that proved to be very beneficial were peer review and value engineering (VE). Recommendations from the peer review session and the VE study were incorporated in the final design.
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Jack Reid
Superintendent of Streets
City of Aspen
Aspen, Colorado
Aspen, Colorado's, Jack Reid and his crew were operating out of a 100-year-old power plant that was listed on the national historic register. The building was quaint, but impractical.
"We couldn't demolish the building, but it was no longer functional. Land in Aspen is very expensive, and the city council told us we'd have to use the existing space. So we had to find a way to make an industrial facility fit into a 27,000-square-foot parcel."
The first service MDG principal Don Leidy performed was a needs assessment. He looked at everything from office space to the type of vehicle lifts. During the assessment process, Reid discussed what he wanted in the facility-well-designed lower-level work area, sufficient storage space, a strategically located foreman's office-then Reid and his staff along with Leidy and the design team visited ten different shops in the mountain areas of Colorado that were less than eight years old.
"I talked to the other managers about what they liked and didn't like about their facilities," Reid says. One design element that came out of those discussions was the in-floor ventilation exhaust system. "This feature has worked out very well for us. The equipment is there when it's needed and stored in the floor when it isn't. An overhead system would have conflicted with our bridge crane."
The biggest challenge on this project was aesthetics. The facility backs up to a $3-plus million home across Castle Creek and has several other multi-million-dollar homes in the immediate area.
Opening up the design meeting to the public helped solve this challenge. The design team came up with half a dozen sketches and presented them at an open public meeting at the old shop. People were given the opportunity to talk about their concerns as well as what they liked and disliked about the designs. "The design team then went back and incorporated almost every concern the public brought up. We ended up with a 19,000-square-foot facility that cost $2 million," Reid says.
The Aspen crew has been in their new facility since 1994 and according to Reid, "I've yet to find something I'd change. Leidy was invaluable. We spent a year in the design stage. That's more time than most spend, but we were working with such a small space, we couldn't afford not to think of everything."
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Jerry Marinzel
Project Manager
Port Authority of Allegheny County
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Jerry Marinzel of the Port Authority of Allegheny County in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, took on the job of renovating and building an addition onto the West Mifflin bus garage that was originally constructed in 1970. "We had outgrown the garage. Not only had our fleet grown, but the garage was built for 40-foot-buses, and we now have 60-foot-buses," says Marinzel.
Marinzel recommends keeping employees involved in the design process. "The employees who work in the facility provided good 'nuts and bolts' suggestions. The more you involve people who actually work with the equipment in the design process, the more likely they are going to buy-in to the new equipment that's installed," he adds. For instance, the mechanics decided they wanted to use a ramp-type lift rather than traditional pits to perform inspection.
Also, he's found that the "high-tech" solution isn't always the best solution. "In our case, we tried touch pad controls for the vehicle lifts. We found they were high maintenance and required someone with specialized skills to repair them. For us, the old manual controls worked best," Marinzel comments.
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- Perform a needs assessment. No two facilities are exactly alike, and it's important that the building fit the facility's needs. Whether it's extra storage space, more vehicle parking, or extra wide bays, determine what will make your facility run more smoothly before the design process begins.
- Talk to other managers. One of your best resources is another manager who has been through the design and construction process. Seek out other mangers and find out what works and doesn't work for them.
- Conduct planning meetings. Make sure all those people impacted by your facility can participate in its conception. If appropriate, get input from politicians and the public in the beginning of the planning process. This will build community support, foster goodwill, and establish a good neighborhood attitude.
- Involve employees in the design process. Employees who are included in the design phase often have valuable suggestions and also are more likely to "buy-in" to the project.
- Look into the future. Design a facility that fits today's as well as tomorrow's needs. Try to anticipate future trends in fuels, energy conservation, or vehicle design and design the facility so that it can easily be updated later.
- Become the expert. Know as much as you can about your facility as well as the work design and construction consultants will be doing so you can ask the right questions. Building or remodeling a vehicle maintenance facility is a major undertaking, and it's in the fleet administrator's best interest to see that the project is completed successfully.
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