FFEN partners with skilled, pro bono volunteers across a number of disciplines to assist with food shelf improvements
For more than a year and a half, the professionals at Wold Architects & Engineers have been scouting out food shelf projects on behalf of FFEN.
When a food shelf team considers a major remodel or the purchase of a site, FFEN staff provide an on-site assessment of the space, focusing on food shelf functionality. FFEN partners with a team of skilled, pro bono volunteers, like the ones at Wold, to help take that assessment a step further and consider the project from an architecture and engineering perspective.
“I think philosophically we tend to believe more perspectives are helpful in doing the assessment of the layout and making sure everything is being considered,” said Kate Burggraff, FFEN’s executive director.
Many of those skilled volunteers, she said, bring important perspectives related to accessibility, potential permitting considerations, and electrical requirements for the coolers and freezers that food shelves often maintain. The partnership with Wold has been particularly valuable because of their broad areas of expertise leveraged for food shelves to make smart building decisions.
“It gives them a roadmap on what to do to get the building prepped.”
Sitha Chhum, Wold Architects and Engineers
Sitha Chhum is the lead electrical engineer for the healthcare division at Wold. He said their team can help identify concerns or limitations of buildings being considered.
“It’s like moving into a house, you don’t know until you live in it for a while,” he said. “It’s nice to have somebody there to do a little pre-inspection.”
Wold experts do a walk through of the space, identifying areas that have the electrical capacity for food shelf refrigerators and coolers, recommending upgrades to electrical capacity and assessing the safety of older refrigeration equipment. On the architecture side, they can identify load-bearing walls and fire walls. They consider everything from aisle sizes and occupancy ratings to building code requirements and accessibility requirements for Americans with Disabilities.
“It gives them a roadmap on what to do to get the building prepped,” Chhum said.
To date, Wold has consulted on projects with The Sanneh Foundation, Hudson Backpack and Food Program’s Fresh Harvest Pantry, Comunidades Latinas Unidas En Servicio (CLUES) and the Community Action Center in Faribault.
Melissa Stein is an associate with Wold.
Stein said the Wold team, with the help of FFEN staff who provide insight on guidelines and best practices in the sector, discuss recommendations for structuring entryway spaces, waiting rooms, the flow of people inside the food shelf service area, and the set-up of ancillary spaces and storage spaces.
“We go beyond what’s there to what could be there,” Stein said. “We want to make sure it fits the needs and how the food shelf staff and volunteers function.”
Wold staff works in the public sector, building schools, police stations and fire departments. All those projects, Stein said, focus on space utilization for the good of the community and food shelves are an extension of that public sector work.
“It makes a difference in the communities we serve, and we understand, that because our buildings are in the public sector, they have a huge impact,” Stein said.
Wold’s pro bono work with FFEN fits into their company’s mission of giving back to the community. And, she said, the work they do with FFEN helps change the way people think about food shelves, removing some of the stereotypes and stigma.
“It’s really about making an impact in the communities we serve,” Stein said.
