Project Description

The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) has launched a capital improvement program for its Millbrae Operations Center. At over 17 acres, the new facility combines the existing Millbrae Administrative Building with the Water Enterprise staff and equipment from the Rollins Road Facility.  Millbrae Operations Center is the administrative, maintenance and water quality testing hub of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission Peninsula Water Division. Its engineers, machinists, biologists, watershed keepers, plumbers, and chemists ensure high quality water flows to SFPUC’s customers 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They also respond to emergencies throughout the water system.  

A cohesive design maximizes the best attributes of the site and creates a unified departmental vision; improves efficiency in workflow, circulation, safety and collaboration; enhances resilience through seismic design and new site power and building systems; and creates a new Water Quality Laboratory Building. The identity for the new facility is rooted in a regional and site-specific sense of place, inspired by Northern California Redwood forests, rock outcrops of the San Francisco Bay Peninsula watershed, as well as the history of both timber and masonry construction throughout the region and the site, itself.  

The Millbrae Operations Center is situated in the City of Millbrae, just west of San Francisco International Airport, south of the City of San Francisco, and north of Silicon Valley. The western edge of the site runs along El Camino Real (State Route 82), which is a central transportation spine of the South Bay’s San Mateo County. El Camino Real originates from the early networks of indigenous Ohlone trails and trade routes that follow the peninsula’s flat, inland ridge. These routes were later adapted into a network of caminos reales, “royal roads”, connecting the Spanish Missions of California.