Case Engineering Provides Structural Design for Warehouse/Office Addition at Reckitt Benckiser Plant in St. Peters, Mo.
Case Engineering provided structural design for a tilt-up warehouse and two-story office addition at Reckitt Benckiser’s St. Peters, Missouri plant, including steel framing, snow-load reinforcement, and a highly visible 20-foot retaining wall.
Case Engineering recently provided structural engineering services for a new warehouse and office addition at the Reckitt Benckiser manufacturing plant in St. Peters, Mo.
Reckitt Benckiser—a global consumer goods company known for hygiene and health brands such as Clearasil, Airborne, and Lysol—relocated its consumer and logistics center and custom manufacturing operations from Springfield, Missouri, to the Premier 370 Industrial Park in St. Peters in 2017.
For the expansion, Case’s structural team partnered with St. Louis-based Dial Architects and Civil & Environmental Consultants to design structural support for a tilt-up concrete addition. Designed to meet strict FM Global standards, the project includes a 56,000-square-foot, single-story warehouse and a 20,000-square-foot, two-story office. The office features 13,000 square feet on the first floor and 7,000 square feet on the second floor, along with an elevator, an accessible ramp, and two staircases.
Case designed the steel framing for the roof and floor systems and also reinforced the existing structure to account for drifting snow loads created by the new addition.
In addition, Case engineers designed a prominent 20-foot-tall retaining wall to accommodate the significant grade difference between the warehouse floor, the office’s lower level, and the exterior site grade. Because tilt-up panels were installed on top of the retaining wall, the design 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 and 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.”
The retaining wall design also accounted for thermal expansion and contraction, as well as concrete curing shrinkage along the long exterior wall, helping reduce the risk of cracking while preserving the appearance of a highly visible site feature.
The project’s general contractor was St. Louis-based G.S. & S. Construction.
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