The project was for the inspection and reporting on the Norfolk Fire Service estate. Its purpose was to define barriers to equitable use of the facilities by a gender balanced work force.
Ensemble Architecture worked collaboratively with Matter of Place Architects as two practices to develop a ground-breaking new assessment criteria and digital survey for public service buildings, to inspect the condition of 42no. stations and establish the ‘as is’ position against key themes: including zoning, spatial use, gender inclusion, accessibility, user experience, wellbeing and more.
The team researched and developed more than 3000 questions taking account of national and international best-practice on fire station provisions, then built a digital survey app to allow convenient surveying on-location by a variety of team members.
The intent of the project was to help Norfolk County Council identify work required to the individual facilities to provide an effective professional workplace where all staff feel valued and enabled to competently carry out their duties.
Three Winning Facts:
- Created bespoke assessment and survey tool to support workplace of 800 NFS Personnel
- Two Norfolk-based architecture practices developed an innovative collaboration to develop the assessment, delivering the surveys and report findings together.
- Results led to Norfolk County Council committing £8.5m funding towards the upgrade of Norfolk Fire Stations over the next 5 years.
