The new Amazon Fulfilment Centre is located in the London Distribution Park in Tilbury, built on the site of the old Tilbury Marshes.
The centre comprises a total of 2,204,664 sq. ft. of process and storage space arranged over four floors and also includes a two-storey office block totalling 100,000 sq. ft., with associated welfare facilities. In addition, the project includes a 1,700-space multi-storey car park, a service yard with ancillary buildings, service roads and an external car park. The car park is constructed using predominantly pre-cast concrete construction for the piled foundations, with ground beams and a structural frame. The service area provides 94 lorry parking spaces and an additional area of truck parking offering a further 73 spaces.
The steel frame of the warehouse is clad in Kingspan composite panels with Holorib mezzanine floors. Achieving the correct tolerances for each floor was vital to enable Amazon’s automated robotic systems to work correctly within the building.
Design Tolerances
We had to understand the requirements of the internal equipment first, before designing the structure. The Amazon automated robotic systems are heavy and extremely sensitive to uneven floor levels. Achieving the correct tolerances for each floor was vital to enable the systems to work correctly within the building
Programme
Programme speed was the most important driver for the client as Amazon needed to expand their distribution capacity in the UK quickly. We managed to handover the facility 2 weeks earlier than expected (5% faster programme) through our piling solution that set a UK record of 250 piles driven per day.
Earthworks
- Construction of a 500,000 sq. ft print distribution centre over 4 storeys resulting in 2,000,000 sq. ft of distribution area in 52 weeks.
- Construction on medium stiffness clay over Alluvium River deposits (swamp like material).
- Earthwork solutions fundamental to delivery of the project to support 9 piling rigs, 8 mobile cranes, two crawler cranes, ancillary mobile plant and delivery HGV’s.
- Stone replacement technology was utilised, engineering and enhancing 120,000m3 of material to form a robust working platform in 12 weeks.
- Lime and cement were engineered to the softer material to remove excess water and recompacted in built up layers to form the platform.
- Land drains were installed during the Earthwork phase to control water during the project.
- Approximately 104,000m3 of quarried/re-cycled material was avoided for the construction of an equivalent working platform.
- 11,500 delivery lorry movements avoided to the road network.
The result was a productive construction project over the winter period with no delays to the programme.
