Greenfield warehouses and manufacturing facilities.

A portal frame building is a well-understood product. Fabricators build them to a repeatable process and the erection sequence is predictable. What is not predictable is the ground it sits on, the water that has to leave the site, and how long the electricity distributor takes.

So we front-load. Geotechnical investigation early enough that the slab and footing design are not assumptions; the stormwater strategy resolved before the site layout is fixed, because detention takes land; the connection application lodged as soon as a load can be estimated.

The warehouse slab is simultaneously the floor, the working surface, the racking foundation and the thing every materials handling machine on site depends on. Its flatness class is set by the racking supplier from the truck type. Its thickness and reinforcement follow the geotechnical result and the point loads from the rack legs. Its joint layout is coordinated with the rack grid so that a joint does not land where a leg does.

All of that has to be right at the pour. There is no version of this where it is adjusted afterwards without grinding, and grinding a warehouse floor is an expensive way to discover that the sequence was wrong.

Portal frame span and grid

Wider spans cost more steel and buy fewer columns in the racking field. The right answer comes from the rack layout, not from a rule of thumb.

Roof and wall systems

Sheeting profile, insulation and the fire performance of the wall system, particularly where the building sits close to a boundary or houses a higher-hazard use.

Translucent sheeting and daylight

Cheap to include at construction, effective for operating cost, and a roof penetration strategy that has to be settled with the sprinkler layout rather than after it.

Office and amenities

Usually a two-storey insert at one corner, with its own code path, accessibility requirements and services. It is a small building inside a large one and it takes disproportionate coordination.

Future expansion

If a second stage is contemplated, the knock-out panel, the slab edge and the services capacity are cheap now. We ask, and we record the answer.

• The siteTitle, survey, and any geotechnical or contamination work already done.
• The operation it is being built forEven in outline. A speculative building and a purpose-built facility are different projects.
• The vehiclesLargest vehicle, frequency at peak, and whether containers will be set down on the hardstand.
• The estimated electrical loadA rough figure now beats an accurate one in three months.
• The date that mattersAnd what happens if it moves.