The new £14 million Blue Light Hub fire, police and ambulance campus in Milton Keynes features a live-fire training building designed and built by Crofton Engineering.
The joint facility for Buckinghamshire & Milton Keynes Fire Authority, South Central Ambulance Service and Thames Valley Police, is built on a 3-acre site at Thornbury, West Ashland. It is one of the first of its kind in the country and is due to open this Autumn.
The three blue-light services will work and train together at the new building, which has been designed to provide state-of the-art facilities. The Hub has also been specifically designed to establish closer relationships with community groups and the public at large.
One of the largest and most up-to-date constructions that Crofton Engineering has recently been involved in, the project features a steel-framed, four-storey high-rise training building with fully enclosed stair tower and live-fire smoke house.
Features include a Fireblast Raven interior with LPG gas props, a ground-floor LPG kitchen fire with flashover and a first-floor bed fire. The facility will also have artificial smoke generation in addition to the live fires.
There are also multiple lobbies to facilitate alternative search routes and fully enclosed dedicated control rooms for each fire to the side of the building. The construction also features a ground-floor dry riser inlet with outlets to all four floors.
Fireblast’s interior fire-training props deliver the realism sought in an advanced fire-training programme. From realistic home and office burn props, to highly specialised props, there is not one environment that Fireblast Global can’t simulate. The LPG gas allows for a cleaner-burn training environment and produces minimal by-products. The smoke generator provides a low-visibility training environment and makes training more challenging. Smoke fluid is water-based, non-combustible and non-toxic for zero health and environmental impact.
The comprehensive technical rescue training building features include a specialist rope rescue, 7m-long suspended crane jib and high-level platform and USAR training facilities, including breeching and shoring for rescue-from-collapsed-structure scenarios.
‘The new live-fire building at the Blue Light Hub is a first-class example of how fire services are designing the latest training buildings to provide a wide range of realistic and challenging scenarios,’ says Glen Godfrey, managing director of Crofton Engineering. ‘With increasing collaboration and training together among the emergency services and other rescue organisations, the Blue Light Hub will offer state-of-the-art facilities for joint training in live fire, USAR and much more.’
For more information, go to www.crofton-eng.co.uk
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