Domayne Alexandria located at 84 O'Riordan Street, Alexandria, is a retail and bulky goods development by the Harvey Norman Group. The building occupies a one hectare site. It has three suspended floors each with an average area of 8,500 m2, and a total floor area of over 34,000m2 including the insitu basement carpark.

Precast cladding was nominated in the original design. However the builder, Buildcorp Australia Pty Ltd, pushed to redesign the building using as many precast components as practical. Buildcorp wanted substantial cost and time savings. Hanson, through its diversity in precast manufacturing was able to provide all the precast components required.

The redesign used precast hollowcore floor planks and precast beamshells for almost all of the suspended floor area. The columns remained insitu and were poured from the precast deck above, eliminating the need to scaffold around the columns. The layout was based on a 10.85m x 8.4m grid. The 1.8m wide beamshells were used in the 8.4m direction as band beams and the hollowcore planks were used to clear span the 9m between band beams. Insitu topping was then poured to tie the floor together.

Precast bridge planks were used for bridging the adjacent canal for vehicular access. These planks were designed for the higher traffic loads delivery trucks impose on bridge structures.

Precast walls were used in all lift, stair and ventilation shafts. Using mainly 175mm thick solid precast panels these provided the lateral stability to the overall structure. Erected early in the project sequence these provided construction access to the upper floors. Hollowcore wall panels were used to clad the rear elevation of the building and provided an extremely cost effective solid cladding.

Erection of the structure presented a number of challenges, a large spread out site, multi level construction and limited access to the perimeter would have forced less persistent builders and precasters to give-up. The availability of high capacity mobile cranes and some clever erection sequencing helped to solve these challenges.

The solution lay in providing a construction corridor through the building and using a 100 tonne mobile crane. The corridor through levels 1 and 2 provided the crane access near the centre of the building allowing the crane to reach a large part of the site. The suspended ground floor slab on which the crane sat had to be back-propped for the extra loads and was the working deck for the crane and delivery vehicles. The structure was then erected around the corridor and was later filled in with hollowcore floor planks.

Ian Dopper, Construction Manager for Buildcorp Australia Pty Ltd said "Hanson's experience and 'can-do' attitude combined with Buildcorps site team worked through the design and erection to produce a time and cost efficient structure..."

Contact Details

To discuss whether we can assist you contact our estimating manager.

Phone: 02 9627 2666

Fax: 02 9627 5161

Email: precast@hanson.biz