In response to the increase of natural and man-made disasters over the past decade, the concept and use of Urban Search and Rescue teams was developed. Teams are typically multi-service, multi-skilled, and multi-functional task forces developed within the framework of existing response agencies. They have the capability to deal with almost any type of incident either man made or natural. The Team may be used in part by the local emergency services or as a whole depending on the requirement, with the capability of being fully deployable on a 24/7 basis with a muster time of 6 hours.
 

As the Teams are trained to respond to a wide variety of disaster scenarios and may be deployed anywhere / anytime, organization of the team's equipment and the ability to rapid-deploy are key factor's to the team's success. In 2004, Impact Cases was contracted to design / develop and manufacture a containerization system to meet and exceed their very rigorous requirements.

  


The Challenge

• The cases needed to be weatherproof

• The cases needed to be able to hold very heavy payloads

• A number of different case sizes were required with the cases being inter-stackable

• Different stacked case configurations had to yield the same cubic volume / geometry

• The "cubes" of stacked cases had to be readily palletized for rapid deployment

• The Team had thousands of individual pieces of equipment - each requiring a dedicated cavity

The Solution

Impact's designers worked closely with the
Team leaders to determine the appropriate
case sizes which would allow all pieces of
equipment to be packaged while maintaining the
desired "cube" volume of stacked containers

A four case size combination was chosen:

Full Length / Full Height
Full Length / Half Height
Half Length / Full Height
Half Length / Half Height

Both the Full Length / Full Height and the Full
Length / Half Height cases share the same
footprint, allowing two cases to fit side by side
on a standard commercial pallet.

    

 

 

The Full Length / Full Height case is 20" high - allowing for these cases to be stacked three-high on a pallet and readily be accepted on commercial transport aircraft.

Two Full Length / Half Height cases occupy the same volume as one Full Length / Full Height case.

Two Half Length / Full Height cases occupy the same volume as one Full Length / Full Height case.

Two Half Length / Half Height cases occupy the same volume as one Full Length / Half Height Case, or one Half Length / Full Height Case.

Four Half Length / Half Height cases occupy the same volume as one Full Length / Full Height case.

  
 

 

Impact design professionals worked again with the Team leaders to group related equipment into each container, then colour code the container lids so that Team members could quickly determine which containers were dedicated to a particular function and where the containers should be deployed on-site. Each container had a dedicated custom CNC cut interior, designed to accept specific equipment. This approach facilitated inventory control procedures by Team members and assured that no piece of equipment would be left unaccounted for.

  

 

 

  


Toll Free: 1-800-881-7544 • Phone: 905-470-7888 • Email: info@impactcases.com