Radius Plastics Factory, Portadown

Doran Consulting was appointed to provide civil and structural engineering design service for this 99,000 ft² industrial building designed and constructed on a fast track programme to provide uPVC extrusion facilities for Radius Plastics. The chosen site for the plant was a zoned site by Invest Northern Ireland, which had previously been upfilled.

The superstructure consists of a three bay steelwork portal frame with overhead gantry cranes. A mixer plant building 14m in height occupies one corner of the building footprint. The ground floor slab was designed and constructed using steel fibre reinforcement with a power floated shake top hardener finish.

The substructures were of traditional pad and strip construction with lean mix concrete being used under the foundations to sound bearing under. The external concrete yards were constructed using steel fibre reinforced concrete on hardcore fill on stabilized ground. Rolling dynamic compaction and lime stabilization process was used extensively around the external yard areas to improve the sub grade layer for the yard construction.