DC Bavelse Berg, Breda | Eight soccer fields of warehouse floors

On location Bavelse Berg in Breda, SYSTABO, part of VolkerWessels, is building a new distribution center of no less than 40,000 m². All floors in the new distribution center - totaling nearly eight soccer fields in size - will be
realized by Van Berlo. Because of the time pressure, the flooring specialist was able to free up the busy machinery in time with the necessary art and skill. An interview with Technical Commercial Advisor Frank Louwers.

The new Bavelse Berg distribution center arrived earlier this year at Van Berlo on the table. "At that time, our client had already engaged a structural engineer and selected a floor type himself," says Louwers. "We often regard a warehouse floor as an integral project, with the various divisions working together as a true single construction team. For Bavelse Berg, we only realized the floors and were not otherwise involved in the engineering. Nevertheless, this is a beautiful and large project for us."

Pouring the floor.

Subsurface settlement

The fact that SYSTABO hired its own structural engineer had a reason. Says Louwers, "The subsoil on site was quite sensitive to settlement and had to be compacted in a special way. That had already been realized before we came into the picture. So it was only logical that the structural engineer looked at the floor construction. Based on the new, stable situation, we were able to realize a floor on steel. We realized a hybrid floor consisting of traditional reinforcement supplemented with steel fibers. Where most of the forklift movements take place, the floor was designed in accordance with DIN 15.185, the highest flatness requirement. In total, this concerns some 14,109 m². This flatness standard has been demonstrated by means of a report. The other floors are executed in a VB Hecta according to flatness NEN 2747 Class 4, while the loading pit and mezzanine meet Class 5."

Levelling and finishing the floor.

In total, Van Berlo processed 381,547 kilograms of reinforcement netting, 153,195 kilograms of steel fibers and pumped 8,074 m³ of concrete at the new distribution center at Bavelse Berg. "We completed the project in 34 pouring phases," Louwers reflects. "In the process, we used three super-flat machines, which, incidentally, initially proved unavailable at the time of planning. With the necessary art and craftsmanship and optimal coordination with SYSTABO, we succeeded anyway."

New distribution centers are springing up like mushrooms in our country. Van Berlo is working tooth and nail (with ten (!) shifts every day) to deliver all jobs on time. "We are actually constantly looking for new employees to strengthen our team. Because specialists are hard to find, we started our own company school where we also hired our own teacher. This is because in regular education there is hardly any attention for pouring and finishing (superflat) floors. Through our company school we can train new employees to become accomplished floor specialists, so that we can continue to produce beautiful and super-flat floors in the future," concludes Louwers.