Greater Manchester Fire Service

The brief

A new Greater Manchester Fire Service facility in Bury opened with no external identification at all. The building was a blank canvas: no signage, nothing to identify the site to the public, to visiting crews or to anyone attending in an emergency.

Bradshaw Gass & Hope, the architects on the scheme, approached Signage Systems with proposed details for the signage. We worked alongside them from that point on: developing the designs, specifying the materials, manufacturing and installing the finished scheme. Everything was produced to the fire service’s existing brand guidelines, with colour matched to RAL and Pantone references plus one bespoke match where no standard reference was close enough.

The constraint that shaped the job

Nothing went into production until it had been approved by the fire service’s own technical engineer.

Materials, designs and fixings were all subject to stringent internal requirements and, given the client, fire rating was non-negotiable across every material used. Approval covered the full specification, not just the visual design: substrate, adhesive, fixing method and finish all had to satisfy the engineer before a single sheet was cut.

That is a slower route to production than a commercial signage job, and it is where projects of this kind usually slip. We built the approval cycle into the programme rather than treating it as a delay, submitting complete technical specifications up front so the engineer had everything needed to sign off in one pass. The fixed delivery and installation date held.

The site was also live and operational throughout installation. An active fire service facility cannot be closed for a signage fit-out. All work at height was planned and carried out around normal operations, with no disruption to the site.

What we made

Five signs, all manufactured to a fire-rated specification:

• Two flex face signs, 5m × 9m each
• Flat cut lettering, 8m in overall length, 800mm tall letters
• A profile-cut stainless steel fire service crest, full-colour printed
• A post-mounted sign, 2m × 3m, concrete-fixed into the ground

The stainless steel crest and the flat cut lettering were laser cut, the single process we take outside our own workshop. Everything else, from large format printing through framing, assembly and finishing, was produced in-house in Manchester before dispatch.

Substrates were mixed: brick, ACM cladding and ground-fixed foundations, each requiring a different fixing approach signed off in advance.

Technical specification

The result

Delivered on time, to the approved specification, with no disruption to a live emergency services site.

The building now carries a complete external identification scheme that meets the fire service’s own technical standards and its brand guidelines, approved by its engineer before manufacture, and installed to a fixed date that was set months in advance.