Appling, Georgia
Columbia County Emergency Vehicle Operations Center
120 acres
GMC designed a state-of-the-art Emergency Vehicle Operations Center for public safety driving training. Sheriff’s deputies, emergency medical service personnel, fire fighters, and other public safety officials who require driver certification to operate their respective public safety vehicles utilize this course for training.
Columbia County, Georgia, and the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office hired GMC to design a state-of-the-art Emergency Vehicle Operations Center (EVOC) for public safety driver training. The EVOC sits on a roughly 120 acre site in Appling, Georgia.
The EVOC includes an off-road recovery track, emergency braking track, a concrete cone course, a “little town” training facility, two braking skid pads, an intersection training course and a three-way high-speed course that can run one full circuit or can be broken into two smaller training hi-speed courses. The facility is utilized for driver certification training of sheriff’s deputies, ambulance personnel, fire fighters, and other public safety officials who require driver certification to operate their respective public safety vehicles. Through growing partnerships with the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office, the facility is utilized by various state, county, and municipal employees in the region.
GMC provided project management, project coordination, environmentally sensitive area identification and delineation, topographic survey, subsurface geotechnical investigation, pavement design, roadway and site design, stormwater design, erosion control design, permitting and construction phase support to Columbia County’s construction management and inspection team.
The project duration, from survey and concept design through construction completion and final closeout, was roughly 18 months. This was achieved through a very close and collaborative partnership with the project team consisting of Columbia County, Columbia County Sheriff’s Office, and GMC. The project vision, goals, and timeline were identified early on, and the project team maintained constant communication and coordination from every level within each organization.
