Design ID were appointed as part of a design team, led by TODD Architects for the construction of a new 3 storey Office HQ building for Woodside Group, one of Northern Ireland’s leading haulage and distribution companies. The project also included re-development of car parking and external disribution yards on their existing site at Ballynure, Co. Antrim. The new office building was constructed immediately beside their existing office building, which would be demolished in a later phase, to create additional staff parking.
A fundamental client requirement from the outset was to avoid disruption to day-to-day operations on the site. This required careful consideration of construction logistics and method of construction for the building. The site compound size was restricted as a result and the decision was made at an early stage to incorporate as many pre-fabricated elements as possible into the design. The structural solution inlcuded a steel frame with pitched portalised roof structure to create vaulted ceiling spaces in the upper floor. The roof was formed using cold formed purlins and a proprietary insulated roof tile system. To optimise the grid and reduce the number of internal columns, precast hollowcore floor slabs were installed to span approximately 9m between primary support beams. The external treatment combines staggered storey height panels of glazing and grey / white facing brick.
The sub-structure installation had to compete with a large number of existing services including critically sensitive communication cables, the heart-beat of opertaions on the site. All services in the area had to be maintained and could not be diverted. To minimise excavations on site a suspended ground floor structure, consisting of precast hollowcore slabs was installed to support internal partition walls. Slabs spanned 9m to tie in with the superstructure frame, onto wide concrete strip foundations and trench fill to the underlying stiff clay.
The new facility benefits from state of the art technology and infrastructure to meet the increasing needs of the business, which continues to grow its operations across the UK, Ireland and mainland Europe.
Client: Woodsde Haulage
Architect: Todd Architects
Photographer: Joe Laverty
