Innovative $136 million Primo Smallgoods facility wins award

The Australian Institute of Building has applauded the innovative design and engineering delivered during the construction of Primo's $136 million smallgoods facility at Wacol in Brisbane.

The AIB's Queensland chapter awarded Wiley, the facility's developer, its Excellence in Building State Award for Research, Development and Technology.

According to Wiley, the two-year project was broken into two stages. The first stage covered the cold storage and distribution facilities, and the second stage focused on the production and administration buildings.

“One of the biggest challenges was communicating the complexity of this kind of project’s unique food processing and manufacturing hygiene standards across a complex network of design, engineering and construction teams,” said project director, Graham Harvey, who accepted the award.

“Additionally, all project members were fixed on an immovable project end date which would enable Primo to meet its immediate Christmas demand.”

According to Harvey, the company achieved this by employing in-house building information modelling (BIM) / 3D modelling to effectively communicate key design elements across all project and client teams.

Wiley is now in the running to compete at national level, with the winners of the AIB's National Awards to be announced at a gala dinner in September in Melbourne.