Modular Fire House

Ardebili Engineering provided Mechanical, Plumbing, and Electrical Engineering services for the construction of a 7,295 SF ground-up modular fire house in Miami-Dade County. The engineering team worked alongside the architectural team and the modular manufacturer to coordinate MEP systems across independent modules, a process that required each "box" to function as a self-contained unit rather than relying on a shared building-wide grid.

Given the project's location within a High-Velocity Hurricane Zone, the design accounted for the additional structural and connection requirements that apply to modular construction in South Florida, where exterior points of connection between units must maintain both independence and resilience under local wind codes.

Electrical Design and Modular Isolation
The electrical scope centered on a dedicated equipment room housing the building's core electrical equipment, including tankless water heaters. Each module receives power from this central location through MC cable, with a strategically placed exterior splitter box distributing service to an individual panel within each unit. This configuration keeps every module electrically independent, preventing any direct connection between units and allowing the fire station to isolate, service, or eventually reconfigure individual modules without disrupting the rest of the building.

Plumbing Scope and Space Efficiency
Plumbing venting was routed within individual modules rather than through cross-module horizontal runs, preserving the isolation strategy applied to the electrical design and simplifying future maintenance.
The building does not include a washer or dryer, since Miami-Dade Fire Rescue provides offsite laundry service for its stations. Removing this program requirement freed up square footage within the floor plan, which the design team reallocated to improve the layout of the remaining modules rather than leaving it as unused space.

Maintenance and Long-Term Flexibility
All exterior points of connection and cleanouts were placed outside the building envelope, giving facility staff direct access for servicing without entering occupied areas of the station. Combined with the modular electrical isolation, this approach gives Miami-Dade Fire Rescue the ability to maintain, replace, or expand individual modules over the life of the building without taking the full station offline.

The result is a fire station that meets the operational and safety requirements of an active MDFR facility while reflecting the coordination modular construction demands between architect, manufacturer, and MEP engineer from early design through final connection.