California Emergency Management Agency - Headquarters & State Operations Center
Sacramento, CA

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PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
For many years, the California Governor’s State Office of Emergency Services, including its State and Regional Operations Centers, had been conducting its business from less-than-optimal facilities located south of Sacramento.  Several years ago, the State Legislature authorized funding in excess of $20M to design and construct new administrative and operational facilities for the OES. Recently, the name of the agency was changed to the California Emergency Management Agency (CalEMA).


ACSI's RESPONSIBILITIES:
ACSI was engaged by the project Architect, Dreyfuss and Blackford as the member of the project design team responsible for all facility low-voltage communications, security, life-safety and A/V systems. ACSI also worked with their consulting architect, RossDrulisCusenbery. This work included defining, quantifying, designing and cost-estimating a myriad of voice, data, radio, satellite and media communications systems, and assisting the architects in planning the facilities to meet systems installation and operational requirements. Working with OES staff, ACSI was able to gain consensus in defining all of the systems requirements and to coordinate the requirements for placement of numerous HF, VHF, UHF, and microwave and satellite antennas within the facility and site design.

The facility’s numerous communications systems are used by OES administration to communicate with local governments throughout California, as well as the Federal Government. The scope of their design and functionality is very comprehensive. Further, a high level of technical sophistication characterizes these systems.

Some of the facility communications, security, and life-safety systems were procured as a part of the basic building construction and thus under the responsibility of the general contractor. The procurement of the other more esoteric systems was deferred until later in the project construction process thus permitting the latest technology to be implemented. For all these systems, ACSI took a leading role in administering the work of the several systems integration contractors.
As might be expected, the project included a mid-size data center configured and designed to support both emergency preparation and response operations. It was designed to Tier II standards with additional embellishments selected to reflect the location of the facility. ACSI worked with the key members of the project design team to see that the design and construction of all the building systems were highly coordinated to maximize the facility’s ability to continue communications and computer operations in the face of substantially deteriorated external conditions.