Saiful Bouquet is the Engineer of Record for the new Los Angeles Emergency Operations Center, (EOC). The new EOC is the focal point for coordination of the City’s emergency planning, training, and response and recovery efforts for major disasters such as fires, floods, earthquakes, and acts of terrorism. The EOC houses the emergency management department, a new fire dispatch center, fire department operations center, and police department RACR division and operations center. The structural design is complete on the 2-story 83,000 gsf new state-of-the-art City of Los Angeles EOC located in downtown Los Angeles. The building is designed as a base isolated facility to allow for critical operations to continue immediately following a major regional earthquake. The structure itself is designed as a steel construction with eccentric brace frames as its seismic bracing system.
SBI was very proactive from the beginning in developing multiple structural schemes and worked very closely with the architect and the owner. This interactive collaborative effort led to the selection of the final structural and base isolation system that was not only very cost-effective but also provided the architectural and functional layout flexibility. Unlike typical base isolated facilities, this building only has a handful of steel braces, which resulted in significant savings in structural steel. This was achieved through a combination of the use of the state-of-the-art advanced seismic analysis along with an innovative base-isolation system (tension-restrained friction pendulum system).
