As one of the leading civil engineering companies in this area, HBPW or in particular Paul Withers, has spent many years working together with the International Association of Cold Storage Construction to add invaluable insights and technical expertise to produce the following documents on insulated envelopes and cold stores:

• Design, Specification and Construction of Cold Store Floors
• Design, Specification and Construction of Insulated Envelopes
• Model Specification for Cold Storage Construction

The publication of the revised Concrete Society Technical Report 34, has provided the opportunity for revising and updating the Cold Store Floor Guide. The revised Floor Guide will be published in the near future.
Research to produce these documents has allowed HBPW to derive state-of-the-art details and techniques, which we have applied to our civil engineering consultancy work. For example a system to accelerate the rate of temperature ‘pull down’ during initial construction works and subsequently during the operation of a cold store has been developed in-house. Construction programme time savings in the order of one month can be made by adopting this technique which represents a major cost saving opportunity.

HBPW is also putting this theory into practice by gaining commissions from the UK arm of Maple Leaf Bakery, the biggest bakery in North America. Substantial commissions have been obtained for their Mexborough and Workington Plants.

Other major commissions for cold stores engineering include ASDA and Wetherspoons.

The subject of cold store floors has been researched thoroughly by HBPW’s Managing Director, Paul Withers and he was, in fact, technical editor of the International Association of Cold Store Construction’s authoritative document “The Design Specification and Construction of Cold Store Floors”.

At HBPW we’ve developed techniques for the design of heavily loaded cold store floors supported onto insulation, and these have been developed together with curing techniques, allowing “pull down” periods as short as ten days or less, from the time of casting.
This represents a real benefit in terms of early utilisation of the cold store, allowing the client to gain early returns on his investment.
Examples include:-

• Iceland Cold Store, Swindon
• Intervention Cold Store, Paddock Wood in Kent

Necessity has been the mother of invention. When HBPW was posed the engineering challenge of using glass as a structural material, most notably for a specialist engineering contract undertaken at Canary Wharf in London, our engineers went the extra mile in the use of structural glass in complex and highly stressed locations.
They have now developed their specialist expertise in the use of glass as a structural material to a fine art. This means that HBPW can integrate the use of structural glass into a project without referring to specialist designers which reduces project design time.

Understanding the critical locations of corrosion in street lighting columns – which could affect their long term stability is essential. To reach understanding of this crucial safety issue, HBPW Consulting has carried out fundamental research with CMT Testing of Derby and published technical articles to assist lighting engineers in local authorities across the country.
HBPW and CMT have now prepared spreadsheets that enable lighting engineers to establish the required planting depths for lighting columns in a variety of soil conditions.

HBPW undertake structural inspections of sports grounds and write the subsequent reports that include, for example, reference to testing of safety barriers. This information is presented to the relevant local authority to assist them in the issue of the required safety certificate.

HBPW has developed a specialist pool of knowledge in areas of design and consultancy, that are not normally provided by other similar civil and structuralengineering consultancy firms. One example is the work our engineers have completed on a project of remedial strengthening of filter bed walls at a sewage treatment works in Leeds.

Thermal expansion of the circular walls of filter beds during the summer months allows the granular filter bed material to settle and maintain contact with the enclosing walls. Subsequent thermal contraction of the enclosing walls during the winter months causes the granular filter bed material to exert high restraint forces tending towards passive earth forces.

The enclosing walls of the filter beds were not, in general, designed to sustain such large forces and many of the walls had suffered severe cracking and displacements.
Our lead engineers have developed and applied a technique of wrapping filter bed structures with post-tensioned cables, to increase the strengths of the structures. This meant that the useful life of these critical structures were greatly extended.
The proven effectiveness of this solution is that filter bed walls strengthened by this technique are still going strong some 30 years later.

HBPW not only provides specialist engineering consultancy in respect of strengthening but is also able to project manage the actual strengthening works programme.