Refurbishing Fire Stations to Provide Healthy and Inclusive Workplaces
Emily Frith, Senior Estates Improvement Manager for HIWFRS, details the Service’s ongoing ambitious refurbishment project.
Over the past five years, Hampshire and Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Service has run an ambitious capital programme, known as our Station Investment Programme, which aims to create a fit for purpose estate that supports the needs of a modern fire and rescue service.
Under this programme we have rebuilt two incredible stations: on-call station Bishop’s Waltham (Winchester) rebuild was successfully completed in 2023, and wholetime station Cosham (Portsmouth) later in 2024. Both new builds represent our ‘gold standard’ across the estate, designed in collaboration with the firefighters on site, with a modern decontamination specification, inclusive facilities, and bluelight/partner collaboration at the heart of them. As successful as these projects are, it is not feasible and, in some cases, not necessary for us to rebuild every single one of our 61 fire stations across Hampshire and Isle of Wight, and so we started exploring refurbishments on a wider scale. This is proving to be a great alternative to retro-fit new build principles whilst investing in our existing building stock.
The average age of our fire stations is now over 60 years old. Although they have seen various remedial works over the years, there had been no large-scale investment to address the aging facilities and risks associated with the industry growing priority of contaminants, as well as legacy disproportionate welfare facilities. To target our investment efficiently in the refurbishments, we prioritised the following design statement:
Our estate will provide a Healthy and Inclusive Workplace: Our estate will support the health and wellbeing of our people by providing clean and safe zoning to manage fireground contamination risk, inclusive rest and wellbeing spaces, and by supporting a diverse workforce with the provision of individual welfare facilities.
To address contamination management on site, the refurbishments established separate zones to control the flow of the building and reduce cross-contamination. This was achieved by physically restructuring the layout of the stations where required. Based on the Skelleftea model, stations were zoned into red, amber, and green:
- Red – zones with a constant level of risk from fire contaminants
- Amber – zones with a variable level of risk from fire contaminants
- Green – zones with minimised risk from fire contaminants
Red zones include breathing apparatus cleaning and laundry rooms, where contaminated PPE and equipment is handled and washed, presenting the highest level of risk. We ensured these zones had external entrances to avoid tracking contaminants through the station to access. These zones also benefitted from upgrades to the washing, drying, and storage equipment, to larger and more modern machines and practices to better manage PPE across our estate. Red zones directly led to amber zones which include decon showers, drying rooms, and kit rooms. These transitional zones have a variable level of risk due to the potential for residual fireground contaminants left on the equipment or personnel travelling through. We then kept green zones such as kitchens, offices, and dorms, separate from any of the red and amber areas, operational equipment, and PPE.
As part of the refurbishment programme, we provided two sets of toilet and shower facilities: decontamination pods as part of the decon flow, and ‘clean’ pods for all other use. For decontamination use, our ratio is 1 decontamination shower pod per 2 members on a watch, so that we have flexible resilient facilities that can accommodate the shower within the hour should this become policy. We then have separate facilities elsewhere on site for ‘clean use’, i.e. start of day, for non-operational site users, or post gym use to prevent cross-contamination.
The Service made the decision to move from gendered facilities to an ‘individual’ approach, to provide inclusive facilities that met the needs of all. This was about ensuring we had the right facilities and enough of them to allow our firefighters to decontaminate safely and quickly, with privacy and dignity. These facilities were designed in consultation with our staff network groups. We met with our gender equality network group FireINSPIRE, which is where the importance of acoustic requirement and purchasing sanitary / incontinence waste bins over just female sanitary bins was raised. It also highlighted the need for ‘grab-bag’ lockers directly outside of shower pods, for direct access to personal items without having to contaminate the station to access these from their main locker. We also worked closely with FireREACH, our religion, ethnicity, and cultural heritage network group on case study based on a local university that had already installed individual toilets. This showed us that individual toilet stalls but with shared handwashing facilities would not be appropriate for us and led us to build a specification that best suited our ways of working. These facilities future proof the estate by reflecting the diverse makeup of a modern-day fire service now and anticipate the potential makeup to come.
We also considered practical requirements when designing these facilities. There’s a bench in the pod to place clothes and get changed, with negative pressure ventilation directly above the showers with a bulkhead to cap off the steam. This prevents the rest of the room and their spare clothes from getting damp should they need to immediately respond to an incident post-shower. If firefighters respond to a fire incident with damp clothes beneath their PPE, they risk steam burns due the combination of heat and their wet clothes. For general decontamination and cleaning areas we install extraction and positive pressure ventilation for clean air flow, whilst ensuring it is on separate ducting to the rest of the station to prevent recycled air causing cross-contamination.
Practical design went into the materials we used for our decontamination areas. We moved away from materials such as wooden worktops, tile grout, and painted walls, as each of these materials are porous by nature and hardy to clean, withholding dirt and contaminants for decades on end. We swapped these materials in the refurbishments for vinyl flooring, PVC wall cladding, and stainless-steel worktops and kit racks in red zones and transition zones that can be easily wiped clean and will not retain the contaminants. Although not an intentional design principle, we found we had the opportunity to wrap in carbon reduction upgrades throughout the refurbishment works. We subsequently swapped fluorescent tubes to LED lighting, made heating upgrades, and could use more energy efficient systems in place of old.
One of the questions we often get is where did we get the space from to make all these changes. The answer to this is predominantly we are adding nothing new but using what we had in a more efficient way. Gendered and communal toilets and showers had excess circulation space that in the refurbishment has been maximised at every opportunity to create the individual pods. The largest opportunity to free up space was the removal of communal locker rooms, which were usually large rooms central to the station. When we moved to individual dormitories, we moved personal lockers into these rooms, freeing up space and creating a welfare space for individuals to go during their shift. They now had a private space with access to their personal belongings to get changed in dignity.
These dorms not only encouraged a better changing policy on station but also provided a space for decompression. With a bed, mechanical ventilation, and a reading light, the dorms provide a quiet and private space for individuals to go. On our new builds we install purpose-built wellbeing rooms where we can: these are multi-function spaces decorated to a domestic spec, with soft furnishings, away from corporate feel of everywhere else. On refurbishments we are limited in available space, so these dorms offer the same principle, where individuals have a quiet space where they can go to for reflection, prayer, or meditation.
A key part of these refurbishments was the stakeholder engagement. From the beginning to end, the fire station crews were engaged in the project. This managed expectations, ensured the station would work on a day-to-day basis, but also encouraged feelings of ownership and familiarity before the designs had even been built. With firefighter input into decontamination flows it meant less opportunity for user error once in place because they understood the requirement and the journey behind it. We also continued engagement post-completion with handover sessions and lessons learned workshops. With twelve refurbishments in the programme, we have continued to learn from each to better build a standardised specification that is fit for purpose.
We have now successfully refurbished four fire stations, with two nearing completion and three more in construction. By the end of 2025 we are programmed to see all twelve sites complete. We have addressed decontamination and inclusivity across our station, protecting firefighters not just in physical health but also supporting wellbeing and mental health. We are now so very conscious as an industry of the impact of contaminants, both from the FBU’s reports to the daily updates in research. These refurbs have had a real impact on our firefighters feeling much more valued and healthier in their workspaces and will continue to serve our diverse workforce for years to come.