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Case Engineering recently provided structural engineering for a new warehouse/office addition to the Reckitt Benckiser manufacturing plant in St. Peters, MO.
Consumer goods company Reckitt Benckiser, the maker of such hygiene and health brands as Clearasil, Airborne and Lysol, moved its consumer and logistics center and custom manufacturing operations from Springfield, MO to the Premier 370 Industrial Park in St. Peters in 2017.
Case’s structural team partnered with St. Louis-based Dial Architects and Civil & Environmental Consultants (CEC) to design structural support for the plant’s tilt-up concrete addition. Designed according to strict FM Global Standards, the addition includes a single-story, 56,000 sq ft warehouse with a 20,000 sq ft, two-story office that features 13,000 sq ft on its first floor and 7,000 sq ft on its second floor, with an elevator, accessible ramp and a pair of staircases.
Case designed steel framing for the addition’s roof and floor, along with reinforcement of the existing structure to support drifting snow loads resulting from the addition.
Case’s structural engineers also designed a prominent 20-foot-tall retaining wall to accommodate the large grade differential between the warehouse floor level, the office’s lower level and the exterior grade. Tilt up panels placed on top of the retaining wall required specialized detailing.
“The cast in place concrete retaining wall constructed along a substantial portion of the warehouse perimeter required careful consideration and detailing due to its unusually tall retained soil height and its prominent visibility from the main road,” said Case Principal/Senior Structural Engineer Ardie Mansouri, PE. “Particular attention was given to construction sequencing, allowing the wall to be built and backfilled before the tilt up panels and the cranes required to set them could be brought into place.”
Case’s retaining wall design also addressed thermal expansion and contraction, as well as concrete curing shrinkage along the long exterior wall to reduce the risk of cracking and preserve the aesthetic quality of such a visually exposed feature.
The general contractor on the project was St. Louis-based G.S. & S. Construction.
