Woonsocket, RI Owner's Representative
Through comprehensive guidance and expert consultation, our firm successfully led Woonsocket's transformation of their outdated public safety infrastructure. The city's critical facilities—including two 1926-era fire stations and a severely overcrowded 1971 police station—had reached a breaking point, with makeshift solutions like converted lobby spaces and repeatedly subdivided rooms no longer sustainable. Our team immediately recognized the depth of these challenges, including the historical artifact of horse-drawn equipment still stored in one station's basement, and developed a strategic path forward for the city's first major public safety upgrade in over five decades.
As trusted advisors to Woonsocket's leadership, we orchestrated every aspect of this complex modernization initiative. Our approach combined thorough pre-design services with hands-on owner's representative guidance, ensuring the city made informed decisions at every step. From conducting detailed staffing analyses and space needs studies to identifying federal grant opportunities, our team carefully steered the project's direction while managing crucial processes such as A&E team selection, RFQ development, and contract negotiations. This comprehensive oversight allowed city officials to focus on their core responsibilities while we handled the intricate details of bringing their public safety facilities into the modern era.
Some of the Services We Performed
Request for Qualifications
The Center for Public Safety authored this RFQ for the City of Woonsocket to help them secure architectural and engineering services for a new Public Safety Complex that will consolidate police facilities, replace two fire stations, and relocate their 9-1-1 call center. Drawing from our experience and analysis of Woonsocket's needs, we structured the RFQ to ensure responding firms demonstrate extensive experience with similar public safety facilities, including a minimum requirement of ten comparable projects within the past decade.
Based on our analysis of the city's requirements, we developed a comprehensive scope of services that requires the selected firm to review our completed staffing analysis and space needs study, conduct stakeholder interviews, develop multiple site master plan options, and provide full design and construction administration services. We created a detailed evaluation framework allocating 100 points across key criteria including experience, project approach, references, workload capacity, and grant funding expertise.
We established a clear timeline running from October 1 to December 2, 2024, and implemented specific submission requirements including a "cone of silence" policy to ensure a fair selection process. The RFQ provides flexibility for the city to either select a firm directly from submissions or conduct interviews with up to five shortlisted firms. Throughout the document, we emphasized the importance of maximizing efficiency and securing additional funding through federal grants to help manage the city's budget constraints.
Staffing Study
The Center for Public Safety (CPS) conducted a comprehensive staffing analysis for the Woonsocket Police, Fire, and EMS departments, focusing on current and projected needs through 2045. For the police department, CPS documented and analyzed call statistics from January 2021 through June 2024, revealing an average of 2,972 calls, 643 incidents, 89 crashes, 157 arrests, 162 detective cases, and 30 warrants per month. They developed detailed staffing projections maintaining consistent levels across all divisions: 2 personnel in Administration, 34 in the Detective Division, 55 in Uniform Patrol, and 5 in Operations, totaling 96 officers through 2045.
For the Fire Department and EMS services, CPS outlined a staffing structure of 104 personnel divided across four platoons plus administration, with each platoon staffed by 24 personnel including a deputy chief, lieutenants, and firefighters. The analysis included comprehensive response time metrics for different types of emergency calls and established a three-tiered priority response code system (Code I, II, and III) for emergency responses. They also evaluated the department's four fire stations' operations and analyzed emergency call processing times across different center sizes and incident types.
CPS's analysis included flow charts for emergency call handling procedures and detailed metrics for dispatcher performance, breaking down processing times for law enforcement, fire, and EMS calls. The report established that between 2024 and 2045, Woonsocket's population is projected to grow minimally from 43,070 to 44,414, informing their recommendation to maintain current staffing levels while suggesting technological and efficiency improvements to handle any increased service demands.
Interview Questions
The Center for Public Safety drafted a comprehensive set of questions aimed at evaluating architectural teams who presented to the City of Woonsocket. The questioning began by exploring the teams' collaborative history, asking about previous joint projects between the architectural firms and their strategies for working together effectively. Given the city's budget constraints, significant emphasis was placed on space optimization, with specific inquiries about methods to maximize square footage efficiency and achieve potential savings of 5-8% through multi-use spaces rather than single-purpose areas.
The document then delved into the teams' problem-solving capabilities by asking about past project mistakes and their resolution methods. Looking toward the future, presenters were asked to discuss emerging trends in police, fire, and emergency communications and explain how these developments might influence the facility's design. The questions also covered practical aspects of construction, requesting teams to recommend and justify their preferred construction delivery method for the project.
The final portion of the questionnaire focused heavily on financial expertise, particularly regarding funding strategies. Teams were asked to share their experience with alternative funding sources and their track record in identifying applicable federal grants for city projects. This section included a specific follow-up question asking teams to detail their success rates in helping clients secure these grants. Throughout the document, the questions appeared strategically crafted to assess both technical competency and financial acumen, ensuring the selected team could deliver a cost-effective and efficient facility.