Featuring – Facilities & Transportation

The Facilities Department for the ACBDD operates and maintains 59,800 square feet of buildings plus grounds. The largest facility is Beacon School which was constructed in 1979 and contains 30,00 square feet of space. The second largest facility is Atco which was constructed in the 60’s and renovated for the Atco workshop in the late 70’s and contains 19,000 square feet. The current Bus Garage was constructed in 2001 and altered to include SSA Department in 2003 and contains 6200 square feet. Personnel Plus contains 1900 square feet which is leased, and Passion Works contains 2700 square feet which is also leased.

As well as operations and maintenance of the facilities, we also maintain the grounds. This involves clearing snow and ice from the sidewalks and parking lots as well as grooming the lawns around these facilities. Not only do we provide for the physical needs of the facilities, but we are also responsible to provide security for the facilities.

As you all know and especially in light of the recent violence occurring in public places, we have a huge task of securing our facilities. We serve many individuals that use mobility devices. The use of these devices slows the lockdown process and makes evacuation very difficult.

We are working very diligently to develop safety procedures to aid in this task. As mentioned above we have five locations to secure and provide security for. We have developed safety lockdown procedures and are starting to plan and perform drills in all facilities. As soon as the lockdown portion of the security plan is in place we will develop procedures to evacuate as many individuals as is practical in each facility. The evacuation procedure will be more complex given the individuals we serve. As you know we have installed video surveillance and two remotely operated doors at Beacon, Atco and the Bus GarageSSA Office, but even with these improvements, our task of securing these facilities is very challenging.

The Management Team will continue to work with the Health & Safety Committee to look for ways to ensure our clients and staff are safe at our facilities. We appreciate your support as these changes begin to be implemented.