Chicago Fire Department Facility Condition Assessment Spans 101 Facilities

For any community, dependable emergency services are essential to keeping the public safe and healthy. This not only means having emergency responders well equipped but also having facilities that are well-maintained and supportive of their needs. For the Chicago Fire Department (CFD), the largest fire department in the Midwest, understanding their 101 facilities at a deeper level was key to maintaining their capabilities and responsibilities to the City of Chicago and its residents.

Originally established in 1833, CFD utilizes a variety of facilities for its stations and services spanning multiple decades, with some buildings dating back as far as the early 1900s. CFD and the city’s Fleet and Facility Management (2FM) team contracted McKinstry in partnership with Wight & Company, a Chicago-based AEC firm, to perform the scope of work. McKinstry’s scope included conducting detailed facility condition assessments (FCAs), flagging code compliance, safety issues and integrating asset data into our capital planning dashboard, Reveal™.

FCAs for any municipality or government organization allow for a level of understanding about one’s own infrastructure and resources far beyond the number of buildings or who operates them. Through these detailed assessments, owners and operators can understand every intricate system their facilities have, alongside the updates and improvements to guarantee they are running optimally. For CFD, McKinstry approached their FCAs with a strategic combination of both qualitative and quantitative data. This data included field data, industry data, facilities’ lifecycle and cost as well as professional experience and first-hand knowledge from facility users.

To aid in information gathering and reporting, the McKinstry team utilized 360-degree photos of facility spaces. These photos allowed teams to “visit” the photographed spaces from their desks at any time, allowing for confirmation of visual information and better tracking of assets. Additionally, McKinstry utilized our Reveal™ capital planning platform to help manage asset data and provide 2FM staff the opportunity to review models, notes and other information. With over 8,000 assets across their 101 facilities, McKinstry’s Reveal™ dashboard is an incredibly valuable tool for analyzing large amounts of data.

Through this work, the City of Chicago and the Chicago Fire Department now have a centralized, data-rich view of their facilities portfolio—empowering smarter decision-making for capital investments, maintenance planning and long-term infrastructure resilience. McKinstry’s Reveal™ platform, combined with in-field data and immersive 360-degree imagery, provides a scalable digital foundation for CFD and 2FM to manage assets proactively and cost-effectively. This project demonstrates how powerful insights, passionate team members and integrated technology can drive measurable value for essential public services.