TABLE OF CONTENTS Industrial activity encompasses an enormous variety of operations, and industrial buildings provide the required protection from the external environment. Of necessity, therefore, they take many shapes and structural forms and may be composed of a variety of materials.
Industrial buildings can be procured in one of three basic forms:
Specific design
Off the shelf
Speculative.
Many industrial operations will require buildings with a large number of specific attributes. Such requirements will include many of the following:
Location
Plan dimensions
Height to eaves
Column layout
Services provision
Drainage provision
Provision of cranes
Superstructure-imposed load capacity
Floor loading capacity (point load, uniformly distributed
load, line load)
Floor flatness
Floor abrasion/impact/chemical/slip resistance
Access facilities
Loading/unloading facilities
Floor pits
Intermediate platform arrangements
Suitability for automatic guided vehicles
Suitability of environmental controls
Ease of cleaning
Corrosion resistance
Machine base availability
Sound insulation
Provision for future expansion.
Any one of the above may require a specific building to be designed and constructed due to the unsuitabil-ity of available facilities falling into the option (1) and (2) categories.
Apart from performance criteria, an industrial building might also be required to project a corporate identity by a striking appearance. This generally requires a specifically designed facility.
Off the shelf buildings are generally of set modular form designed to a standard set of criteria.
