This project is part of a major relocation of businesses from the Stratford area in East London required to make way for the stadium complex for the 2012 Olympics. We have undertaken three previous schemes for this client in Stratford and this project relocates the first of these built in 2000 along with some older facilities.

The Project involves the construction of a high bay warehouse type building into which a major printing press installation was constructed. The site is located on the former engine casting foundry for the Ford Motor company in Dagenham and subsoil contamination had been remediated under an enabling contact. Two key difficulties remained in the form of peat which is both highly compressible and produces methane gas and the risk of unexploded bombs from the second world war. The foundations were designed using CFA piles through the peat to the underlying gravels and clay and the building was protected from rising gas using gas proof membranes and a venting layer. Each pile location was probed to check for unexploded bombs using specialist drilling and detection equipments. Piles were used to support the building, presses and the ground floor suspended flat slab with 50kN/m2 floor loading.

The site is located on former marsh land marginally above the flood plane and site levels were raised to give a robust protection against flooding. Suds principles were used to reduce the rainwater runoff from the site by restricting the outflow using a hydrobrake and Stormcell for underground water storage.

The very tight program forced upon the team by the need to vacate the existing facilities led to some complex out of sequence working to allow the presses to be installed and commissioned while the building was being completed.

The building is a high bay portal frame structure with three storey offices at one end. The main presses are support on a complex elevated concrete platform with paper fed from below. Between the two press lines a utility building is constructed to service and control the presses.