Firing Range Design

Introduction

I began my engineering career at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in 1984 when the popular TV shows were Chips, Charlie’s Angels, the A team and shows like the Dukes of Hazzard and Dirty Harry portrayed Law Enforcement as the wild west.

Over the next 30 plus years, law enforcement training evolved into a highly technical field that requires specialized knowledge and experience to support. As a Project Engineer and later Chief of Design and Construction, I witnessed the evolution of training facility design from trial and error to a well organized cyclical lessons learned approach. Firing ranges evolved from a dirt pile to indoor complexes with sophisticated target and bullet management systems with high tech HVAC controls.

My colleagues and I have worked as consultants with federal, state, local and private owners throughout the country.

Today many local jurisdictions pursue their own training venues, and each project faces the same set of design decisions that create operational problems resulting in costly rework, maintenance and operations.

This document is written from the perspective of the Owner/User and is intended to help make the process easier to understand and hopefully prevent many common “mistakes” made without the benefit of lessons learned. I have tried to write it in a non-technical format including short stories of good and bad decisions and experiences to help illustrate what works and doesn’t work.

It may seem basic and simple in places but everything included here is based on actual events (LOL...the names have been changed to protect the victims).

It also includes discussion on life cycle issues to demonstrate how short term decisions become long term problems.

The last chapter is “What can go wrong?” and includes stories of how things can get complicated without notice.

Planning

The first questions to answer seems a given. Do you really need a firing range? Are there alternatives? Sounds simple but once a range is built, it comes with risks, responsibilities and expenses that can’t be ignored.

Long term vs short term: Short term needs can become long term problems if proper planning is skipped. Often, the basic need is a open air, dirt berm range just out of town so local officers can practice, sharpen their skills, qualify or re-qualify.

Does the need really justify the expense and have long term considerations been included in the decision making process.

Location and community growth: What may be an isolated site in the beginning can become a high growth area. Business and subdivisions pop up and can create long term issues. Surface danger zones, noise, and lead are all sensitive public issues that can stop training and created expensive corrective actions.

Training considerations: During the planning process, many questions need to be considered and evaluated.

Hold brain storming sessions with stakeholders determine requirements.

Visit other sites of similar size and training requirements.

Annual training work flow should be determined.

How often will the range(s) be used and by how many students?

What weapons/calibers will be used?

Will training be static (i.e. single direction and firing lines)?

What type of target systems will be used?

What distances for each range?

Shotgun, pistol, rifle?

How many rounds per week/month/year will be fired?

Will there be any type of walk down range shooting or multi directional shooting?

Will there be any targets or other features of the range or training that may introduce the opportunity for ricochet?

Have security, range management and maintenance costs been included?

Is the firing range(s) a part of a larger training facility?

Budgets vs estimates vs actual costs

One of the biggest challenges for firing range construction is to get the project completed within the original approved budget. Too often, a budget gets approved based on a quick estimate without the benefit of planning and user input leaving the project to be adjusted and fit into a set amount. I call this working backwards.

The Project Management Institute (PMI) has some interesting definitions for project estimating.

Rough Order of Magnitude estimate – Based on little information early in the process and has an accuracy of +/- 50%.

Budget Estimate – Usually done after a planning phase but before design has started. It has an accuracy of -10% to +25%.

Definitive Estimate - is done during design and based on drawings and specifications. Its accuracy is -5% to +10%.

The challenge is to insure the approved budget includes design costs, construction (and change orders), miscellaneous items needed to begin operation/continuous operation, personnel, maintenance, supply costs. The more information available means a more accurate and reliable project budget.

Design Costs may include and environmental assessment, land surveys, soil borings, models, surface danger zones, noise study, drawings/specifications, construction inspections and meetings.

Construction costs include actual bricks and mortar, change orders, furniture/equipment, IT systems, road work, security fencing, gates, etc.

Operational costs may included simple stuff such as targets, ammunition, electricity, water and sewer service as well as additional personnel, maintenance tools, equipment and service contractors.

Another cost issue is what I call “User requested changes”. These are changes that occur during construction when someone changes their mind, forgot to ask a question or when politics dictate modifications.

Sometimes a range is budgeted to “get us going” then we can add stuff as needed. This thought process works until money is not available for a critical issue like security, baffling etc., that can shut down training.

Site considerations

Firing ranges are sensitive public relations issues. Locating a suitable site for an outdoor or indoor range needs to be done with great care to account for future issues and get public buy in.

A site out of town for an earth berm open air range will work well until population expansion brings neighbors.

An indoor range in a urban area can increase traffic congestion, noise, and possible waste stream issues.

A firing range brings long term responsibility and potential environmental liability. Leased property should never be considered. Closed landfills and other larger isolated tracts away from wetlands and water bodies are better suited for un-baffled ranges.

Common issues

Traffic – Increased traffic doesn’t seem like a problem but should not be left to chance. Quiet areas of the community can easily detect even slight increases in traffic.

Environmental constraints – Today there are numerous environmental groups sensitive to many issues that come with firing ranges. An environmental assessment can be expensive but beneficial up front by addressing issues publicly. No one likes surprises. Farmers, golf courses, hunters, retirees, etc. like peace and quiet and will join together with others when they feel left out of the process.

Surface danger zones (SDZ) – Often overlooked or taken for granted, down range is a potential show stopper. Even a range planned with a SDZ can be a problem. Most accepted SDZ criteria are based on assumptions and conventional wisdom. Ricochets can send a bullet in any direction well outside the SDZ.

Any private land within potential trajectory distance of a firing range is a potential disaster waiting to happen. Rifle calibers present the greatest risk as their distance stretches the limits of most range property.

A decision to locate an un-baffled range with a SDZ extending off of the range property boundaries should never be considered.

Being a good neighbor – Including adjacent land owners during planning makes the process transparent. No one likes surprises and one complaint can create insurmountable problems.

Design decisions

Each project is unique with a specific set of training requirements, budget and site constraints. Many competing interests affect design decisions. The most expensive decision in a firing range project is what type of range to build. There are short and long term consequences. However, most decisions are based on present need and short term thought. A firing range will outlive all of the people making the initial decisions.

Range types:

Outdoor with earth berms (un-baffled) – Very common typical range design for low volume rural use. Low initial cost, minimum up keep. Long term surface danger zone, noise and lead contamination potential.

Fully baffled outdoor range with bullet traps – Bullet containment and lead management issues are addressed. Noise issues both external and internal need to be addressed.

Indoor – The final solution. Everything contained within the building. However, the building is expensive to manage, operate and maintain. Many jurisdictions have no other option.

Tactical ranges (360 degree) indoor and outdoor – High risk for surface danger zone in un-baffled applications. Baffles are complex and expensive. Using non- lethal rounds for 360 shoot house venues should be evaluated. Personal safety is a challenge. Every alternative should be considered including outsourcing this type of training to reduce risk.

Environmental issues

Environmental awareness is a rapidly evolving social issue. Ever changing regulations continue to restrict activities involved with firing range operation. Noise, hazardous waste, occupational safety, wetlands, land use all are issues in the news daily. The trend toward more restrictive regulations should be included in up front planning and design of new firing ranges.

Noise levels from firing ranges vary depending on type range and can be heard for miles. Orientation, topography, walls and berms can reduce but not eliminate what is heard outside property lines. As a minimum, a mitigation plan should be prepared when building an open air or baffled outdoor range.

Lead is a hazardous material. Everything coming in contact with it becomes contaminated and falls under strict hazardous material handling guidelines. A hazardous waste stream begins with firing a shot to disposal of targets and cleaning materials. Weapons cleaning stations can become hazardous areas.

Air flow at firing lines is mandated for shooter/instructor safety especially in fully baffled and indoor ranges to avoid prolonged exposure to ballistic compounds.

Occupational safety issues

Noise – There are many studies and standards about prolonged exposure to weapons fire.

Lead – Prolonged exposure to lead by instructors should be monitored with regular blood work.

Other chemicals – Ballistic compounds from primers and powder are becoming issues.

Any plan for a high use firing range must include an aggressive Occupational safety program.

Wetlands – Jurisdictional boundaries of wetlands are governed by Federal, State and sometimes local regulations. They vary throughout the country and are continually be revised. Long term surface danger zones will one day become a topic of debate as it relates to lead other projectile deposits. Wetlands offer noise and visual barriers but using them as a part of surface danger zone has risks that should be avoided.

An environmental assessment conducted after a site plan and design requirements have been developed will address all applicable regulations and allow for permitting to be done prior to completion of design.

Design firms (Choosing the right firm for your project)

Today, almost any design firm will claim they can design a firing range. This is probably true, but to avoid expensive problems its better to pay a little more and hire a firm with experience. It will pay for itself at some point.

Design firms customarily charge 6-10% of construction estimate depending of site investigations, environmental work and other services during construction. An extra 2-3% spent to hire a proven design firm will avoid common issues discussed in this guide that can shut down training, take months/years to fix and cost significantly more than the design fee. Don’t risk your project on inexperience.

Indoor range design includes complex controls for targets, ventilation, energy conservation and bullet management systems. You need a design firm who knows how to make all of the building systems work together

Typically project design occurs in phases:
     Kickoff meeting and customer interviews
     Concept design
     50% design
     90% design
     Final Drawings and Specifications

At each phase (except final), the customer gets a chance to review drawings and meet with designers to address questions or issues.

One of the biggest challenges occurs because customers assume the designers know what they want and designers assume customers know what they want. Law Enforcement and Design professionals have different vocabularies where the same word often has two different meanings.

Design firms who have complete in-house set of engineering disciplines reduce the chance for coordination errors. Local firms who have outside engineering help often loose details in communication.

Many problems are not discovered until during construction when its expensive to fix.

A consultant who understands this potential communication gap will pay for itself by identifying confusing areas and working through them to insure everyone understands what is being put on drawings and specs.

Construction

For simple open air, earth berm projects, construction is simple and easy to achieve. However, on more complex projects, more consideration for the process is needed.

The most common way to obtain a construction contractor is by using a low bid process. History has proven most low bidders are the company who makes the most mistakes estimating and devote more energy cutting corners trying to cover their loses. A firing range project is doomed to failure under these circumstances.

A more suitable method for contractor selection is one that requires a technical submittal along with a cost proposal describing past experience, qualifications of each subcontractor and examples of the team working together recently on similar projects. This method increases cost but reduces the chance of hiring a contractor with limited resources or technical ability to put the facility together.

Investing more for a qualified contractor will pay for itself when it comes time to start operation and work out any punch list items.

As with designers, experience construction companies keep up with changing technology and materials. They can often locate specialized components quicker and cheaper. Coordinating the multitude of subcontractors required for installation and start up of targetry, controls, HVAC test and balance is critical to indoor and fully baffled firing ranges.

Administrative controls

When something goes wrong we are quick to look for blame. “The range is unsafe” “Conditions are unsafe”, “We can train until the range is made safe” and so on…

No inanimate object is capable of being safe or unsafe by itself. Only human action can create conditions defined as safe or unsafe. That’s where administrative controls come in.

One second, one shot, one person can change everything.

There must be strict rules in place to govern use of any firing range or activity. Everything from arrival, check in, fire arm and ammo issue, loading and unloading, addressing the target, aiming, and most important firing at a designated target must be controlled at every detail.

Safety of the students and instructor as well as unassociated individuals nearby or far away can be affected.

Uncontrolled use of the range by qualified personnel can result in damage to baffles, targets systems and structural components.

Weapons issue, cleaning, handling and storage must have strict controls to prevent unsafe events.

Ammunition not designed for can cause serious damage.

During my career of over 30 years, the vast majority of the “unsafe” conditions investigated were caused by inappropriate or unauthorized behavior of students or instructors. The rest were construction defects or maintenance failures. The point here is no amount of construction, repair, rework or renovation will compensate for improper use.

The best design and construction techniques must accompany strict administrative controls to safely operating any firing range.

Towers – range control towers and booths are difficult to design in a way that allows unrestricted instructor view of all personel on a range. What looks good on paper can become an expensive rework if not closely analyzed during design. The cost of tearing out and replacing a control booth with all the IT systems is worth the expense of 3D modeling.

What can go wrong?

During the mid 80’s, our facility and law enforcement training in general was young, growing and trying to be all things to everyone. Our outdoor firing range consisted of an un-baffled earth berm constructed by digging a pond on the down range side of the berm. There were four ranges with I think 25 firing points. The ranges were busy and shooting thousands of round each month.

One day our office got a call from a man who lived in a mobile home some distance directly down range well beyond our property line. A small hole was discovered in the mobile home that may have come from our range. Upon investigation, a 9mm bullet was retrieved from the hole consistent with the rounds most often used in training. While it could not be proved, it was accepted that it came from one of our ranges.

The ranges were closed for a several months while baffles were installed. Training operations were severely impacted and a team was assembled to review and make recommendations for future procedures.

In addition to training delays and expensive physical modifications, other issues were uncovered.

A hazardous waste stream was documented to exist that had no real management plan. The ground surface within and around the range was littered with lead including the pond and ground water.

The baffles and other physical modifications were installed as a “temporary measure” until a permanent solution could be achieved that included environmental cleanup.

The end result was a multi year, multi million dollar phased program to design and build new fully baffled ranges with bullet traps and bullet handling systems, clean up, stabilize and monitor the old site.

Baffled firing ranges were not common then so as the plan to install 6 new ranges began, two per contract, each design evolved based on lessons learned arriving at a system design that combines exterior safety, noise reduction, training enhancements, occupational health issues and waste stream management.

Fast forward three decades… Environmental and occupational health regulations are stricter with penalties, fines and compensation allowed for failure to comply. Social media instantly puts the spot light on any event where public safety is endangered. So what seems a simple cheap way to build a firing range and begin training can become a disaster.

The moral to this story combines cheap initial construction costs, minimal administrative controls, Surface Danger Zones extending off property, minimal environmental management and culminates into “If it can go wrong, it will.” and in a big way.

Surface Danger Zones (SDZ)

1. A project in a major metro area was planning modifications to their firing ranges to include bullet traps and handling systems. Reviewing the site plan revealed no baffles for the 300 yard rifle range for the swat team. Down range of the rifle range was a busy metropolitan airport. When questioned about baffles for the range, the initial response was “our swat offices don’t miss”… The airport terminal walls were all glass and half of the plane traffic was exposed to the range.

2. Another facility constructing open air earth berm ranges had a neighbor down range who moved a semi trailer to his property line directly down range seemingly hoping find a hole in his trailer.

3. Another project had an un-baffled earth berm range planned on leased property with a SDZ well off the property line in an area where mid to long term residential growth was expected. Not sure but sounded as if the property owner/lessor found out and declined the liability for this plan and canceled the lease before construction began. Note: in this case, design was complete and paid for so a new site and expense of new design was required.

4. 360 degree live fire with no baffles create a SDZ in a circle. When notified that a high school and planned middle school were withing the SDZ, the response was “ we will only shoot in a direction away from the school”.

5. While consulting on a driver training range for a client who had purchased a large tract of land in a rural area, my first thought was they had done their homework. However, the first project was an un-baffled earth berm range with a SDZ that restricted the available space for the large driver training complex. Adjustments made to stay out of the SDZ resulted in a smaller driver training range where speeds were much lower that desired.

Construction Issues:

Indoor ranges

A properly designed and constructed indoor range requires coordination of a multitude of trades. To get proper air flow, a complex set of sensors and controls operate large air handling fans to maintain negative air pressure on the inside. HVAC, electrical, ductwork, controls and test and balance subcontractors all have to follow strict design specifications to make the system operate. The vast majority of these workers are used to standard buildings where set air flow is specified for each room and no changes occur. Getting all the trades to understand how the system works is a challenge but making it happens is more difficult.

During start up of a very large firing range, the team could not obtain the negative pressures specified for proper air flow. Designers checked everything including walls and ceilings to make sure each range was “sealed” enough to allow negative pressure without pulling in outside air. Several days of meetings, testing and rechecking installation of dampers, controls, sensors were required create the designed environment. Rework of loose dampers, sensors in wrong locations, controls not calibrated and filters installed backwards finally resulted in proper design air flow. Long story short...no one fully understood how the system worked and how each trade worked together.

Large fans move huge amounts of air from behind firing ranges down range in laminar flow to return ducts at the bullet traps where it is sent through special filters and back through the range. Crack in doors and walls can make the system off balance. In the case of a supply and return fan working together, if the return fan shuts off, the supply fan can generate enough pressure to damage roofing systems.

Sophisticated control systems must be managed by experience technicians. Filters need to be changed by experience lead abatement teams. Target systems and lead handling systems need to be constantly monitored and maintained.

Steel for bullet traps and baffles must be installed to tight tolerances or risk bullet fragments escaping.

Careful consideration for ammunition used in a firing range can drastically effect construction costs. During design of an indoor range shortly after September 11, 2001, the ammunition proposed for use required a grade of steel that was in high demand for use in armoring military vehicles against IED’s in Afghanistan. The requirement added significant cost and time to the project that could have been avoided with alternative ammunition had been selected.

There are no current environmental restrictions on emissions generated by firing ranges even though indoor ranges are so good and containing lead that terms like “zero discharge” and “pollution free” are used to characterize them. It becomes easy to forget that outdoor ranges allow air discharge of gases and particles from firing.