Engineers Meet Impossible Snooker Floor Challenge!

Probably the most expensive warehouse floor on Humberside gave HBPW engineers one of their biggest challenges to date as 3,000 piles were brought in to help the UK’s leading supplier of safety equipment out of a muddy hole!

Arco’s existing warehouse, NDC1, adjacent to Hull’s Clive Sullivan Way and not far from the Humber Bridge, had reached capacity despite lots of high-bay racking.
As a consequence the company rolled out plans to develop an additional warehouse, NDC2, measuring 100m x 150m x 19m to the top of the eaves, important since the aim was to utilise high-mast forklift trucks as well as Very Narrow Aisle (VNA) racking.

Managing Partner, Paul Withers, said: “Because high-mast forklifts were to be in operation the new floor needed to be exceedingly flat, flatter and smoother than a snooker table!

“That meant that the real challenge of the job was not so much the building structure – that was almost incidental – but the ground upon which it was to sit because below the top crust of one and a half metres of stiff clay was liquid mud down to limestone!”

Piling in progress

As a result 3,000 piles had to be driven into the ground using four piling rigs, in order to support the floor slab. “Those alone cost about £2.4m and the concrete slab a further £1m. Once finished we anticipate that the floor will have cost in the region of £6m-£7m, probably one of the dearest floors, for its size, in Humberside, if not the UK,” added Paul.

HBPW designed the piling and floor slab for the scheme, the only realistic solution to cope with heavy load bearing from product, racking and forklifts. “The floor is being laid to stringent DM1 floor flatness tolerance ahead of high bay racking being placed over it,” said Paul, “which will ensure uninterrupted operation of forklift trucks with the heavy loads from packed product racking.

“The real job here was most definitely the floor because the building structure, in this very rare case, was simple and almost an afterthought to the ground conditions!”

Client: Arco
Contractor: Clugston