After finishing ahead of schedule, the Protective Services building will hold a private ribbon cutting on Feb. 20. There will be a public grand opening later this year.

“Oh, it was huge because we were anticipating a start-up in the spring of 2013 and if there had been any delay, we had students coming and we better be prepared for it,” said Rick Raemisch, dean of Human and Protective Services. “There was talk of backfilling at (the West Campus) so we thought we might be without a home, but everything worked out.”

Since the college achieved it’s goal of having the building up and running early, it was able to start classes at the beginning of the Spring Semester. Furthermore, the college now can have all human and protective services programs in one building. Those include fire, law enforcement and EMS programs.

“This is the first time emergency and medical services are under one roof which offers a tremendous amount of training opportunities, but it gets everyone under a protective services umbrella,” Raemisch said.

Prior to this building being erected, fire program students were in the Fire Services building across from the Truax campus. The college needs to update that facility because it requires repairs, Raemisch said. This new Protected Services building created the opportunity for the necessary updates to take place.

Previously, the criminal justice, EMS and law enforcement programs were located at the West Campus. Having these entities in close proximity to the Fire Services building will allow the college to create a more realistic learning atmosphere, said John Stransky, associate dean of Protective Services.

“When you have an emergency, police, fire and EMS are all at the same scene. They’re doing their different roles, but they weren’t training together,” Stransky said. “So now, they have the opportunity here that will do joint disaster training (and) joint emergency response training so that these three service disciplines will interact together. We’ll turn out a better product.”

With the Protective Services building completed, the new Health building is on its way as well. That building is set to be finished in April. As it reaches completion, Protective Services is working with the programs in the Health building to create a “mock disaster.” This will be a simulated crisis situation involving an accident, fire or some other type of disaster, Raemisch said.

There will be police, fire and EMS students that respond to the disaster and “victims” will be treated at the scene. After that, the “victims” will be sent to the Health building and be treated by nurses in a mock clinic. This will take place on an undetermined date this summer.

Raemisch said experience like this is important, particularly with the amount of the students that graduate and receive jobs within these fields in the Madison area.

“There was a great need for it. I tell people our students enter as students and they graduate as heroes,” Raemisch said. “That’s basically what we do; we train them to protect us. With 87 percent of our students staying in the district, selfishly I want them (to have) the best training there (is) because they are the ones with all probability that will be coming to help.”

The mild winter enabled the Protective Services building to be completed earlier than projected.