Control Center Planning

You can rely on our expert team to plan your new or renovated control center. We have a half-century of control center planning experience and a track record of more than 500 high-reliability facilities throughout North America within the electric, water, and gas utilities, airline, and refinery industries.

Our architects and engineers can:

Develop master plans for new control centers.
Renovate or expand existing facilities.
Upgrade control room components.
Devise security and hardening measures.
Incorporate redundant mechanical and electrical systems

Our team will help define criteria and then provide you with detailed layouts and redundant system descriptions for hardened and resilient facilities according to industry best practices. This gives you a sense for a project’s practical and financial feasibility before you commit substantial funds to detailed design and construction.

Master Planning

Our experts develop a road map to accommodate your future control center growth, including a gap analysis of current facilities to industry standards, location analysis, and green field site selection for primary and backup facilities.

Planning activities for inside the building itself include space programming, departmental relationship analyses, and floor plan options for the operating environment in the control room and the surrounding support functions.

The preliminary site plan you receive from Robert E. Lamb, Inc. will include the building, roadways, parking, storm water management, and security features tailored to your personnel, security requirements, and industry best practices.

Renovation & Expansion Planning

If your existing control center must adapt or expand to accommodate increased staffing – or if it simply no longer functions as required – our architects and engineers can provide a gap analysis to compare how it stacks up against industry best practices. Then, they recommend comprehensive solutions to provide you with a state-of-the art facility.

Security & Hardening

Whether you are contemplating a new or renovated facility, our team analyzes site access controls, incorporates the need to withstand severe weather, plans for mitigation of man-made threats, and includes protection as necessary from the effects of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP).

Utilities, in particular, can depend on our planning to meet critical infrastructure protection standards from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC-CIP).

FEMA P-361

Redundant Systems

Our knowledgeable staff will survey existing equipment and systems and recommend modifications that allow you to meet uptime standards – whether this involves upgrades to legacy mechanical or electrical equipment. This is a critical need in today’s environment, which often features maintenance, operational, and emergency actions initiated within the SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) systems.

Let our expertise in planning redundant systems arm you with the flexibility for ease of maintainability, or a quick recovery in an emergency situation.

Control Room Component Upgrades

Even if you are satisfied with your existing site plan and physical room layout, you can turn to us to improve your control room functionality, technology, and finishes. Key components of control room planning include ergonomic operator consoles, video displays, in-suite amenities, overview rooms, HVAC, lighting, and acoustics. Upgrading your control room with modern furniture and technology can play a key role in operator satisfaction and retention.