This was published 7 years ago
Building big sheds to withstand extreme weather events
Storm events and global warming have prompted significant changes in industrial warehouse designs, particularly in the wake of recent hail events in Sydney that caused multimillion-dollar damage.
Diversified property group Dexus said it has upgraded its national building specifications in the face of increasing threats from adverse weather events and demand from insurers.
Kathmandu's warehouse distribution centre in Melbourne's industrial suburb Laverton North.
Australia's mean surface temperature has risen by about 1 degree since 1910, according to the fourth State of the Climate report released last year.
Rainfall patterns were shifting away from the nation's south, and there was a marked increase in heatwaves and extreme fire weather days.
Kathmandu's warehouse distribution centre in Melbourne's industrial suburb Laverton North.Credit: QANSTRUCT
Australia's east coast has been pummelled by recent storm events.
One that hit the Sydney basin on February 18 caused an estimated $370 million damage, another two years ago caused major damage to Cosco and Metcash's distribution centres in a Goodman Group estate.
Mark Cuddy regional general manager of industrial for Dexus said all new large-span sheds constructed by the group had minimum 2.5 degree roof pitch requirements, larger box guttering and wider drain pipes to clear high volumes of water.
Updated designs also included lifting floor levels to avoid flooding, peer review of structural designs and new roof loading and wind resistance requirements.
A look inside Kathmandu's warehouse distribution centre in Melbourne's industrial suburb Laverton North.Credit: Qanstruct
The changes extend across the group's industrial portfolio which includes large estates in Melbourne's Laverton North and Sydney's Greystanes and Silverwater complexes.
Dexus general manager developments Chris Mackenzie said the upgrades also covered the internal temperature of buildings.
Until recently, distribution centres were designed to cope with several consecutive days of 42 degree heat. "What does it look like if it's over 45 degrees?" he said.
Now they were being built with new levels of insulation and ventilation and extra redundancy built-in for plant and equipment, he said.
Those changes were partly being driven by tenant demands.
Temperature controlled facilities – like large coolstores operated by Coles or Woolworths, data centres or sheds designed for the pharmaceutical industry – require stringent internal environment standards that need to withstand more external heat extremes.
"It's really that certainty of temperature control," Mr Mackenzie said.
"If they [tenants] have signed a 10 or 15-year lease, which a lot of them do particularly because they invest in all the automation and infrastructure internally, you want the building fabric to perform."
Tenants with constant temperature requirements also looked for dual power feeds into and out of an estate to limit electricity outages, he said.
Environmentally sustainable initiatives like rain-water harvesting, sensor-controlled LED lighting, north-facing windows in office sections, and passive design initiatives for improved internal lighting and ventilation were also becoming more common.
A newly finished 25,000 square metre distribution centre for outdoor adventure retailer Kathmandu on the Dexus Laverton North estate incorporated many of these features.
The facility which opened in August last year has a 100-kilowatt solar panel array and intelligent LED lighting systems.