In Summary:

• A Pennsylvania statewide EOC agency suffered from a lack of space at an aging facility that prevented them to introduce new technology and replace antiquated systems.

• MCP and its partner, SCHRADERGROUP, worked together to help PEMA build a new state-of-the-art facility and ancillary building that opened in July 2016.

• The new facility is considered a crown jewel that dramatically enhances PEMA's operational and administrative capabilities

Overview and Agency Challenge

An Emergency Operations Center (EOC) facility located in Harrisburg, PA is home to the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA), a cabinet-level agency that is tasked with coordinating prevention, preparedness, response and recovery activities related to natural and man-made emergencies in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Lack of space and age prevented them from serving the needs of a statewide EOC and limited their ability to introduce new technology and replace aging systems.

How Mission Critical Partners Helped

With a team of architectural partners, including SCHRADERGROUP and Mission Critical Partners (MCP), PEMA built a new state-of-the-art, 132,448-square-foot facility and a 22,985 ancillary building that opened in July 2016. MCP provided a number of services to support EOC facility design including completing a hazards assessment, planning, designing and project managing the implementation of the Internet-Protocol (IP) based, broadband-enabled network infrastructure as well as various communications systems.

The Results

The new facility is considered to be a crown-jewel among mission-critical EOC facilities, including:

• Dramatically enhanced operational and administrative capabilities.
• Fully-redundant and resilient power, water, HVAC, telecommunications and broadband.
• Being designed to mitigate and lessen the impact of risk. Multi-generational mission critical technology designed to meet emergency communications needs now and into the future.
• Significant network savings of between 30 and 40 percent resulting from MCP’s procurement support.