Civil Engineering March 2021 | Vol 29 No 2

24 March 2021 Civil Engineering of the body shop could be supported on foundations, while the majority had to be supported on a pile and pile cap system. The consultants also had to make sacrifices here by substituting previous design sections with available steel sections. PROJECT BLUE OVAL Project Blue Oval is a renewable energy project established to assist Ford in reaching its target of using 100% locally sourced renewable energy for all its man- ufacturing plants by 2035 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. The first phase of Project Blue Oval is underway at the Silverton facility with the construction of solar carports for 4 200 vehicles. The first goal is to achieve “Island Mode”, in which the plant be- comes entirely energy self-sufficient and carbon neutral by 2024. CONNECTING THE FLOORS IN THE MP&L WAREHOUSE A total of 605 tonnes of steel was used to construct the MP&L warehouse of 195 m × 62 m (12 090 m 2 ). This suspended facility will be used for storage, with the basement extending the full length of the suspended floor. The poor soil conditions required ViKO to use foundations sup- ported off piles. Donnan says the piles were designed using a two-pile-per-pile cap system, which resists overturning moments of the structure and economises the structure by alternating the orientation of the piles by 90°, therefore requiring two piles per pile cap instead of four per pile cap. “With the warehouse floor required to be connected to the press plant floor at a higher level than the current ground level, we had to do a cost/benefit analysis between two options. We either had to construct the warehouse floor to the required press plant floor level by backfilling with engineered fill and casting a surface bed, or we had to de- sign a suspended slab supported off a grid of columns, beneficially providing additional storage space in a basement.” The team found that the suspended floor option was more beneficial due to the increased utility for the building, while only marginally more expensive than the backfill solution, and saved thou- sands of tonnes of carbon emissions. Careful construction planning was also required to ensure that convenient areas of the suspended warehouse could be used for storage as soon as possible and during construction. Due to the large length of the warehouse, the concrete elements required several expansion joints to mitigate cracking of the concrete and shear walls had to be built to resist wind loading transferred for the propped steel warehouse.  Aerial view of the press pit Press plant and body shop under construction Warehouse extension with the suspended slab under construction