Goodman Warehouse Otahuhu

By Graham Hepburn

As part of its ongoing development programme at Savill Link industrial estate, Goodman has completed a new 23,000sq m warehouse, on a designbuild basis, for Super Retail Group. Savill Link is on land formerly occupied by the Otahuhu Railwork Workshops and Goodman, the manager of Goodman Property Trust, is developing it into a modern industrial estate with warehouse facilities. Tenants include major operations such as Toll Holdings, Furniture City and Holden.

Goodman’s project manager Ben Shaw says the main considerations regarding the design of the building were size and ease of use for the customer - in this case Supercheap Auto, a car parts retailer.

“We also have to think about the building’s marketability should it one day be vacated,” says Ben. “So with that in mind, we went with a fairly straightforward footprint and fairly standard stud heights in line with many of our large warehouses.”

Also straightforward was the choice of Maxispan® ColorCote® ZRX for the roofing, Multirib® ColorCote® ZRX for the wall cladding and Maxispan® for the smoke baffle ceiling.

“The roof and cladding material is one of our easier items to decide on for any of our projects as we are driven largely by a need for cost effective materials that can be competitively priced that are still resilient enough for the location concerned,” says Ben. “So with regards to responding to the needs of the business, we need something that performs first and foremost, but that is affordable. The Super Retail Group facility was located next to an estuary so the product needed to be fairly durable, so we went with ColorCote® ZRX.”

The building, which is 13.95m high at its apex, comprises a 19,930sq m warehouse with 3000sq m of mezzanine storage, three canopies totalling more than 3000sq m of coverage and a 600sq m, two-storey office tucked in the northern corner.

Brent Botha, the managing director of Steel Roofing Ltd, said there was a tight five-month timeframe for the build, which meant trades had to be well coordinated.

“Haydn & Rollett Ltd and Steel Roofing worked collaboratively which enabled multiple work faces to be constructed simultaneously, this lead to the project being completed on time” says Brent.

Being in an industrial estate, site access was good although specialised Roofing Industries transport was required for the longest roof sheets of 34.60m.

Brent says “ Regardless of the adverse weather conditions, particularly strong winds off the Manukau Harbour, the project was completed successfully with 23,500sq m of roofing installed as well as a unique 1300sq m smoke baffle ceiling and 6000sq m of wall cladding.”

Project architect Joseph Bashouri, of Woodhams Meikle Zhan Architects, says a roof pitch of three degrees was used to limit the height of the warehouse.

Construction materials are simple, easily available and low maintenance – as well as the profiled steel roofing and wall cladding, precast concrete panels, fibre cement cladding and glazed curtain walling were used.

Joseph says the key elements of the design by Mike Woodhams, the architectural concept designer, were efficient planning of the site (with greater than 50 per cent site coverage), having an open plan office orientated to the north with the façade facing the street and water view, placing warehouse yards out of the prevailing wind, and providing separate truck and car entry points off the street.

He says using a steel portal frame, which sits atop a post-tensioned concrete slab, allowed columns to be kept to a minimum within the warehouse to make the space more flexible.

The building also has multiple roller doors accessing three separate yards so it could be subdivided if necessary in the future. The front yard has a 750sq m canopy, the breezeway canopy is 1915sq m and the rear yard has a 426sq m canopy.

The office was designed as a simple rectangular form and is positioned in a corner of the warehouse to make it a focal point and to help minimise the bulk of the building. It also helps to bring some human scale to the building with the use of elements such as horizontal louvres, a glass canopy at the entrance, fencing and landscaping.

The horizontal aluminium louvres provide shading for the high performance glass as well as creating an architectural element along with the precast concrete panels. Like the warehouse, the office was designed with a flexible layout – internal partition walls are non-loadbearing and demountable.

Woodhams Meikle Zhan Architects