Mineta San Jose International Airport Air Rescue & Fire Fighting Facility (ARFF), Fire Station 20

The San Jose Fire Department required a new facility. Station 20 had served the airport and surrounding area for almost 60 years. The traffic at SJC airport reached a new record of over 15 million passengers in 2019, and major housing developments for thousands of new residents in North San Jose demonstrated the need for more expansive fire-fighting resources and capacity. Fire Station 20 would serve not only the airport but also the surrounding community, a goal that made the project much more complex and demanding. Biggs Cardosa was retained to design the new facility and meet the project demands.

The structure and surrounding elements had to meet the fire life safety requirements of more than one jurisdiction, which required handling competing security standards, additional utilities and HVAC systems. Nonetheless, the project was completed on time and within budget, and it boasts a perfect safety record.

The new fire station is a 18,000 sf structural steel facility with five apparatus bays facing the runways and one to serve residences and businesses, a landside apparatus bay, a maintenance bay, and a residential wing, which includes six dormitories and related living and administrative areas. The apparatus bays house the airport’s four Air Rescue and Fire Fighting (ARFF) vehicles and a repair station.

Design priorities included achieving LEED Silver Certification, making the buildings sustainable, high-performing, and environmentally responsible.

LOCATION
San Jose, CA

Northside Branch Library

Biggs Cardosa performed the structural design for a new 20,500 sf, one-story Northside Branch Library for the City of Santa Clara. The library is a steel-framed structure with three separate roof levels. The roof structures consist of metal deck over steel wide flange beams and girders and are supported by tube steel columns. The lateral loads are resisted by a series of wood-framed plywood shear walls within steel column bays. Biggs Cardosa also provided structural observation on the project to verify the quality of construction.

LOCATION
Santa Clara, CA

San Jose Fire Department Training Center

Biggs Cardosa provided structural engineering services for the design of the San Jose Fire Department Training Center. The project includes several components:

• A new 2-story structural steel fire training/education building approximately 200 ft x 80 ft with special concentric braced frames. The fire training building will be used for fire training classrooms, fire training, EMS, recruit, data systems, and office emergency management administrative offices
• A new structural steel single story Emergency Operations Center including training rooms and administrative space for the Office of Emergency Management. The EOC was designed for a site-specific 475-year response CBC analysis with an Occupancy Category IV (I=1.5) for immediate occupancy performance.
• A 6-story structural masonry and cast-in-place concrete training tower with live fire training capabilities. The structure is coupled with 2 independent single story masonry buildings and linked with a concrete tunnel for confined space training. All three structures were constructed to exhibit different kind of structural systems and configurations to familiarize training firefighters with different kinds of structural systems. The top level includes a structural steel shade canopy for extended training time on the roof for rappelling exercises.
• Building D4 is an existing wood framed warehouse building with metal siding. This building will be used for supplemental non-essential equipment and vehicles as well as providing maintenance material storage and personnel offices.

The completed project will be USGBC LEED Gold Certified, Zero Net Energy and Zero Net Carbon and will meet the requirements of the City’s 2019 Reach Code. The facilities will be fully powered through roof-mounted and carport-mounted solar panels.

LOCATION
San Jose, CA