Project in Progress:
Food Production Facility
The Client
We’ve been working with Tempea for about three years now. Over those three years, we helped them find the right location to house their new food production facility.
Tempea has grown during that time and now serves customers throughout the Lower Mainland and beyond. For this project, the owners of Tempea selected an older industrial building in Richmond, an ideal central location for servicing the broader Vancouver area. Their main clients include restaurants that use soy products in their cuisine.
The Project
Our project for Tempea is in the first stages of a build that should last about six months. We started with an old, rundown structure. Our scope is to refurbish the entire building, right from its bones through to its roof.
We are excited about this project because our restaurant construction experience provides us with the precise niche expertise needed to offer Tempea the working solutions they require.
At the same time, the nature of the structure creates many unique challenges and opportunities that we are eager to tackle.
The Site
When we first arrived at the project location, the entrance door had recently been burned and there was an abandoned trailer parked in the front lot. The walls were tagged with graffiti, and squatters were living inside.
Our first step was to clear out the space. To accomplish this, we coordinated with the local authorities. We then re-secured the structure and began construction once building permits were in place.
The Scope
Work is essential on virtually every aspect of the structure before it will be suitable for Tempea to use.
Over the next six months, we will be:
• Structurally reinforcing the building and bringing it up to code.
• Structurally reinforcing the roof to handle new AC and food production equipment.
• Building a second-level mezzanine with a connecting stairway between two spaces.
• Concrete-trenching the existing slab to accommodate the new mechanical plumbing requirements.
When this industrial construction project is complete, the building will feature a front retail store and a full industrial food production facility in the rest of the structure.
Challenges & Opportunites
As with many industrial or restaurant construction projects, there is a decision to make about how far to go with a certain solution, renovation, or upgrade requirement. That was the case with Tempea’s project as well.
For this site, the main item in question was the existing wood-frame roof.
Based on Tempea’s intended use, we did not need to change the roof for fire rating reasons, as would be necessary for some types of projects. We were able to coordinate with the architect and the city to avoid that requirement, but we now have mechanical equipment that needs to be stored on the roof.
We considered the construction of a new roof to accommodate this requirement. After weighing the cost-benefit ratio of a new roof against using creative structural steel solutions to house this equipment, we decided on the latter.
These pictures show the steps we have taken to save our client money by collaborating with skilled engineers to devise a more cost-effective solution than a full roof replacement.
What is Next in Our Tempea
Industrial Construction Project?
While we already have accomplished many improvements in our renovation of Tempea’s industrial building, the majority of the project timeline is still ahead of us.
We love challenging construction projects like this one; they allow us to develop solutions for our current client that we also can often adapt for future clients.
Stay tuned over the next six months to see how this project unfolds. It will continue to present many challenges and should provide you with excellent insights into our process.
If you have an industrial construction project of your own, please contact us to find out how we can bring your vision to life.
