Porcelanosa, Braehead

The Porcelanosa Development located in Braehead, Glasgow, is a storage and display warehouse for the Spanish tiling company, Porcelanosa. The ground floor suspended slabs were designed by ConForce as post-tensioned flat slabs to minimise the slab thicknesses and to accommodate the particularly high design loads for the racking and storage requirements, with imposed loads of up to 60 kN/m2. The slabs were supported by a combination of ground beams and single piles.

By adopting post-tensioned slabs the number of joints required within the ground floor was significantly reduced which was particularly appealing to the client. The post-tensioning also provided a positive mechanism for crack control due to pre-compression in the slab. With a gross floor area of approximately 7500m2, the ground floor slab was divided into 10 pours of approximately 750m2 per pour, with the largest being just in excess of 300 cu.m.