Commercial and industrial
Industrial building design
Warehouses, factories, industrial units and estates. Unglamorous buildings where the constraints are servicing, access and the way trucks move.
Industrial work is the most straightforward design we do and the least forgiving documentation. The building is usually a portal frame with an office at the front; what decides whether it works is the yard, the truck path, the fall of the land and where the stormwater goes.
We document industrial buildings across metropolitan Sydney and regional NSW — new buildings on estate lots, additions to existing facilities, mezzanine and office fit-outs, and the change of use applications that follow a tenant.
What actually constrains an industrial site
- Heavy vehicle access and turning. The largest vehicle that will service the site sets the yard depth, the gate position and the internal circulation. A B-double changes the site plan; a semi changes it less; a rigid changes it hardly at all. Establishing this at the start avoids designing a building that can't be loaded.
- Site coverage and landscaping. The DCP typically sets both, and on a tight estate lot the landscaping strip along the frontage takes real area out of the yard.
- Stormwater. Large roof and hardstand areas generate substantial flows, and on-site detention is usually required. The tank or basin has to go somewhere, and on a full site that somewhere is under the yard.
- Servicing and fire. Hydrant and sprinkler requirements depend on the building's size and use, and the water supply available at the street sometimes doesn't meet them. This is an expensive thing to discover late.
- Contamination. On any site with industrial history — most industrial sites — a change to a more sensitive use engages the Resilience and Hazards SEPP.
- Interface. Where an industrial zone abuts residential land, hours, noise, lighting and truck routes become the assessment.
Pathway
There is a complying development route for new commercial and industrial buildings and additions within the code's standards, and for alterations and changes of use within the alterations code. In practice, most industrial work of any scale is a development application — the code limits are tighter than the buildings people want to build, and a traffic, acoustic or contamination issue takes it out regardless.
Larger proposals may cross a capital investment threshold that makes them regionally significant, which changes the determining authority. Worth knowing at the feasibility stage rather than at lodgement.
What we do
Test permissibility and the estate or DCP controls, lay out the site around the vehicle movements, design the building, and prepare the application — coordinating traffic, acoustic, contamination, civil and fire input where the site triggers them. Then construction documentation for the builder.
We work regularly as an outsourced documentation partner for builders and developers on repeat industrial work, which is a different engagement from a one-off DA. If that's what you need, say so and we'll scope it that way.
Fee proposals for industrial work are scoped per project.
Have an industrial site or an estate lot?
Send us the address and what you need to fit in it. We'll tell you what the site will carry.