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WEST Midlands Police recently  opened its newly completed Events Control Suite (ECS) at Tally Ho in Edgbaston, Birmingham. Its first major operation will be to co-ordinate policing for the Pope’s VIP visit to the region in September.

Building work started in August 2009 and the project has been delivered several months ahead of schedule and under budget. West Midlands Police ECS project manager Natalie Childs said: “This is down to effective team work and getting the right stakeholders from around the force and beyond involved from the outset, understanding requirements and working in partnership with architects Nicol Thomas.”

The 690 m2 single-storey construction has been financed through a Home Office grant, supplemented by further funding from the West Midlands Police Authority. The resulting facility is equipped with the very latest communications equipment and a range of environmentally friendly technology.

West Midlands Police construction project manager Stuart Ridley said: “When the building was at the concept stage, the force threw out a challenge to architects to come up with a design that would complement the surrounding site as well as being energy efficient. The design we went with is topped off with a self irrigated ‘semi intensive grass roof’, which not only blends in well but offers increased insulation value.”

The building’s other ‘green’ credentials include energy efficient boilers, high specification insulation and an externally controlled air cooling system, ‘smart’ lighting that responds to changes in natural sunlight, sensors on all lights, taps and hand dryers and dual flush toilet cisterns. And while the building may incorporate ‘grass roots’ technology on the outside, the event control room is kitted out with the latest IT equipment including mapping software and video conferencing facilities. CCTV links from across Birmingham are also being streamed into the building, and there are plans to add links to Wolverhampton and Coventry in the future. Acoustically, the room is clad with perforated wooden wall panels and ceiling baffles which absorb noise. The control room provides a total of 60 working positions, 20 of which can potentially be used by partner agencies e.g. ambulance and fire services, the Army and local authorities. Eight large multi-functional monitors around the room can also be used to display up to four CCTV feeds on a single screen, link up to any computer screen from within the room and also allow individuals to keep abreast of current situations via the main news channels.

Stuart said: “We set ourselves a target to better current building regulations and we have improved by 25 per cent, giving us an energy performance rating of ‘B’. The current benchmark for new buildings is a ‘C’ rating.”

This is also the first West Midlands Police building to receive a British Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) rating. BREEAM is a nationally recognised award for designing sustainable buildings. We have had to think carefully about energy usage for every step of the design process and Property Services are currently looking at specifying BREEAM as a standard for any new future builds.”

Architect Rob Martin of Nicol Thomas, based at Birmingham’s Fort Dunlop, is responsible for the innovative design. He said: “The ethos of the building is that it shouldn’t appear too obvious and has been designed to be low profile both inside and outside, so that it sits comfortably within the Tally Ho environment. From the Pershore Road only the very top of the building can be seen as we have used earth excavated for the foundations and banked it up to provide a natural barrier. This has been grassed over, and landscaping around the building will see the site planted with native species of trees later in the year.”

The first events to be managed from ECS will be football and cricket matches scheduled during August. Natalie Childs said: “Events such as these will give Operations the opportunity to test the centre’s capabilities before it gets its first major outing with the Pope’s high-profile visit.”

This will be followed by co-ordination of policing for the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham in October.

“The benefit of the ECS to force business is the ability to get the facility ‘up and running’ within half an hour, with all necessary equipment and facilities already in-situ. CCTV, audio visual and standard police systems will enable the control of events to operate more efficiently.”

Stuart Ridley added: “Birmingham’s profile has improved and as a result the city has more, larger public venues which demand proportionate policing resources. For what it is going to deliver, the event control suite should be a very useful and important building for the city.”