Overview
The Dawn / Queally group of companies operates from several different locations throughout Ireland, the United Kingdom and overseas. We have been employed by them to work at several of their abattoirs and food processing sites in the UK, Ireland, France and South Africa. Our involvement has been from general structural advice and design to a full structural design service assisting their in-house project management team.
At their site in Naas, Ireland we were employed as the Structural Engineers on a large extension to their existing factory to form a Meat Science Centre, the construction of a large mezzanine floor in an existing concrete building, a 100 metre long covered elevated walkway and a waste water treatment works, representing a multi-million pound investment.
Brief
- Foundation and superstructure design and detail for the Meat Science Centre
- Structural design of the mezzanine floor in an existing packaging hall and to check the capacity of the existing structure for an increase in load
- Design and detail a covered, elevated walkway to move people and product safely above a busy operational yard. The walkway needed to navigate several changes in direction due to existing obstacles
- To carry out a geo-technical site investigation at the site of the proposed effluent treatment works
- To design and detail the above ground effluent water retaining tanks and their cover
Solution
- Traditional concrete pad foundations supported a steel mono-pitched frame which bolted to an existing structure along one side of the Meat Science Centre. The first floor was constructed using precast concrete floor planks and steel beams with shelf angles to limit the floor construction depth
- Cast in-situ curved stairs and landings to the double height fully glazed feature entrance
- Lightweight steel box frames covered with cladding spanning between protected steel posts formed the elevated walkway
- Trial pitting and soil testing with a JCB to characterise the prevailing ground conditions in the vicinity of the effluent tanks
- Design and detail 5 interconnected effluent / separation tanks some 5metres high using cast in situ reinforced concrete with a 30 metre span steel portal frame sat upon the tank walls supporting a roof and vertical sheet to fully enclose the structure