"Within the walls of industrial and logistics warehouses lie the unseen gears of progress. Beyond mere tin sheds, they harbour the technology and cloud infrastructure that power our daily lives, craft the goods we rely on, and safeguard the archives of our collective memory."

Project managing Industrial Fit Outs: 

Industrial or logistic warehouses, or sheds, are more complex than they seem. The 'sheds ' of today home a variety of uses, and under the planning use class B2, there lies a hive of light industrial activity; just a few examples;

Many technical challenges need to be considered. Unlike conventional office or residential fit-outs, industrial fit-outs require more bespoke designs to facilitate the occupation. So, a typical institutional specification allows a shell and core design to give a tenant the best possible starting point. For example, an insulated shell, sufficient power, basic WCs, superb loading bays, and parking are a few. 

Teasing out the general market requirements and the specific occupational requirements requires a team that can create challenging designs and is familiar with market trends.

  • Vast power and cooling demands and secure IT connections

  • Archive filling may require humidity control to keep the space dry, but it might be good enough to introduce good ventilation.

  • Dust-free, toxic gases, welding and hot spots, all have implications on the M&E

  • High racking and automated picking create structural and fire engineering issues.

  • High cooling loads and draught lobbies to the dock doors

  • Dry storage ith automatic pick-and-pack robots or manual labour- the technological advances are huge

SW1 Surveyors recently advised a client on the acquisition and fit-out of a 22,00 sq ft warehouse fit-out of high-end aviation component production. One of the critical challenges of this project was to ensure an equal lighting level in areas with a 12m high ceiling to allow precision manufacturing processes at the ground floor level. Heating and ventilating such a vast volume and keeping precision engineers comfortable at their workbench raises its challenges. 

So if somebody says, 'it is just a tin shed,' beware. We can help project manage your next industrial and logistic warehouse development to achieve everything you want it to deliver.