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Professional education
The Public Safety Facilities Planning Seminar
A working session for city and county administrators, police and fire chiefs, emergency management directors, facilities staff, and the project management staff who will actually carry a facility project, covering how these projects are planned, funded, and built.
Next session Registration open
March 11 and 12, 2027 · Orlando, Florida
Two days on how a public safety facility project is planned, funded, procured, designed, and built, presented by The Center for Public Safety together with Architects Design Group. Registration is limited to current city or county employees.
- Dates
- March 11 and 12, 2027
- Location
- Orlando, Florida
- Early registration
- $395 per attendee through February 11, 2027
- Standard registration
- $450 per attendee from February 12, 2027
- Lodging
- A list of area hotels is sent with your confirmation
Most Agencies Build Once in a Career.
A chief may spend thirty years in the profession and be responsible for exactly one building. There is no opportunity to learn this by repetition, and the consequences of the early decisions, which are made before anyone with construction experience is involved, persist for the life of the facility.
The seminar exists to close that gap. It walks through the full arc of a public safety facility project, from recognizing that a building is failing its organization, through programming, funding, procurement, design, and construction, to occupancy. It is built around what actually goes wrong, and when.
Curriculum
What the Session Covers
Four parts, running in the order a real project runs. Each one is built around what actually goes wrong at that stage, and when.
Establishing the Need
How to document that a facility is inadequate in terms a governing body will accept. Space needs assessment, the relationship between staffing projections and building size, and the difference between a deficiency and a preference.
Funding the Project
The realistic funding paths for public safety construction: bonds and referenda, grant programs, certificates of obligation, impact fees, and phased approaches. What each requires, how long each takes, and which combinations actually work.
Procurement and the Design Team
Delivery methods and their consequences, writing an RFQ that produces comparable responses, evaluating and selecting a design team, and structuring the owner’s role so it does not collapse onto one already-busy person.
Design, Construction, Occupancy
Where projects go wrong: scope drift, the change order cycle, and the operational details that are value-engineered out and cannot be recovered. The session also covers the transition into a live building without interrupting service.
Faculty
Who Teaches It
The seminar is presented jointly by The Center for Public Safety and Architects Design Group, so the planning side and the design side of a facility project are in the room together. Peer speakers from agencies that have been through a project are announced during the session.
Stockton Reeves
Executive Director, The Center for Public Safety. Leads the firm’s space needs, staffing, and funding work, and serves as principal-in-charge on its engagements.
Ian Reeves, AIA, IALEP
President, Architects Design Group. Brings the architectural side of public safety facility delivery, from programming through construction administration.
Rodney McManus, LEED AP
Senior Vice President, Architects Design Group. Covers sustainable facilities and the construction process as it is actually experienced by an owner.
Sami Gerwick, RA
Associate Vice President, Architects Design Group. Covers interior design, security, and the operational detail that decides whether a finished building works.
Who attends
Built for the Whole Project Team, Not Only the Chief.
City and county administrators, police chiefs, fire chiefs, emergency management directors, facilities department representatives, and the project management staff who will carry the work day to day. Registration is limited to current city or county employees.
The most productive attendance is a group from the same jurisdiction. A great deal of the difficulty in facility projects comes from the chief, the manager, and the finance director holding different and unexamined assumptions about what is being proposed. A shared day tends to surface that early, which is the cheapest moment to surface it.
Registration
Spring 2027 in Orlando
Registration for the March session is open now. Early registration is $395 per attendee through February 11, 2027, and $450 per attendee from February 12 onward. Attendance is limited to current city or county employees, and a list of area hotels is sent once a registration is confirmed.
Sessions can also be delivered on site for a single agency, a county, or a regional association. If a private session would suit your jurisdiction better, get in touch and we will put dates to it.