Morgan Sindall Construction completes transformation of new Ramsgate Fire Station

Building work has completed on a new state-of-the-art fire station and training centre in Ramsgate, Kent.

Delivered on time and on budget by Morgan Sindall Construction, the new Ramsgate Fire Station will support 22 firefighters from full-time crews and 14 on-call firefighters and enable them to be prepared for emergencies any day of the year.

The company was appointed to the scheme by Kent Fire and Rescue Service, who say the new station brings their training facilities into the 21st century with firefighters being more prepared than ever to provide effective emergency services to the local area.

Fire crews have moved from the town's previous station in Effingham Street - which had been home to the fire service for 113 years.

Russell Chatfield, area director at Morgan Sindall Construction, said: “Ramsgate Fire Station has been serving the local community for more than a century and we’re incredibly proud to have been involved in this exciting next chapter in the station’s history. We hope everyone is delighted with their new home, which will help the service to continue building on its longstanding reputation for many more years to come.”

Ramsgate Fire Station’s new home on Newington Road consists of a two-storey fire station block which includes office space, sleeping quarters, apparatus rooms, and facilities for multiagency working with police, ambulance service, as well as a gym for voluntary sector workers.

An adjoining two-storey training block contains a training facility for firefighters.

Russell added: “During the build, it was particularly important to our team that our customer was kept at the centre of the project and was kept informed at every stage of the building’s progress. We believe that this collaborative partnership was crucial to achieving a perfect delivery and handing the building over on time and on budget.”

Advanced technology was used towards the final stages of the build to create immersive walkthroughs of the station. Using Matterport 3D HD software the project team was able to transform 360-degree images into 3D immersive representations of the building, which could then be viewed by the client through a virtual reality (VR) headset.

Stephen Paine, contracts manager at Morgan Sindall Construction, said: “It was a brilliant experience for our team to be able to provide this added immersive element using Matterport’s innovative software and provide this unique, real-life perspective of the space.”

During the build, a large World War II air raid shelter was also discovered by Morgan Sindall Construction’s project team. Discoveries such as this are common in Ramsgate, which was heavily targeted by German air raids during the war, leading to the town building an underground community known as the Ramsgate Tunnels which featured a hospital, a barber’s, concert hall and other amenities.

To overcome this design challenge, the project team invited local archaeologists to assess the site. Experts found that the shelter was not part of the Ramsgate Tunnels network, but was instead a standalone shelter for a former school which had been located south of the site. As a result, archaeologists confirmed that the shelter could be filled in and built upon to make way for the new fire station.

Ramsgate’s new fire station will also be used as a base for the British Red Cross and has additional space for the police and ambulance service to use.

• For more information about this news release please contact Steph Bocking at Influential on 0151 239 5000 or email [email protected]