Simply put, we were out of space at our Hayden location and the cooperative continues to grow rapidly. Our growing ranks and the fleet of vehicles used to serve our members were straining our previous facility. A third-party professional study of our long-term needs placed our property requirements at more than twice our Hayden facility size.
Below are some of the specific growing pains we must overcome in the immediate future.
- KEC has a fleet of more than 100 vehicles. Our Hayden facility did not have enough enclosed or covered vehicle storage for a fleet of this size. This forced a portion of our fleet to be parked outside in the elements, which shortens the overall life of the vehicles and can increase our response time during outages. We needed another nine truck bays (or nearly double our Hayden space) to adequately serve our membership. It may seem more logical to park these vehicles outside, but when you consider that an average line truck costs well over $100,000 and the price of a digger derrick (a truck with a long boom and a drilling/digging bit on top) can top $400,000, it’s clear KEC needs to protect these assets to ensure they can serve the membership for as long as possible.
- KEC’s previous mechanics’ bay was too small to effectively support, maintain, and repair a fleet our size.
- Traffic flow in and out of our Hayden facility was inefficient for the size of our fleet as well as for large equipment deliveries.
- Road restrictions imposed by highway jurisdictions and roundabouts planned near our former headquarters further impede our operations.
- We had outgrown our material warehouse which needed to be expanded by about 30 percent.
- KEC’s Hayden location's outdoor space was limited and didn’t allow for adequate onsite material storage.
Due to our growing workforce, the space our crews needed to meet daily and complete required safety sessions was no longer adequate and needed to be increased to accommodate growth.
Interior office space had reached maximum capacity. There were no available offices to accommodate new employees, even considering work-from-home opportunities. - Space required for storage and IT equipment was largely undersized and could not be expanded without eliminating offices.
Our Hayden headquarters facility sat on about 15 acres of land divided by Dakota Avenue in Hayden. This division caused some logistical and safety challenges, as it required a steady flow of both foot and vehicle traffic between sites on an increasingly busy road. While some of our constraints at the time could be corrected through a major building remodel on that site, it would not be efficient or effective in the long term.
Additionally, there were some challenges that were location-specific:
- Road configurations and traffic restrictions made it extremely difficult for materials and equipment to be delivered to our Hayden headquarters and for our own trucks to leave our site. Annual spring road restrictions further exacerbated these problems.
- Due to the proximity of our location to the airport, the cooperative was subject to significant building restrictions, thus constraining our ability to remodel the facility or construct additional vehicle storage.