Laverton Cold Storage

The building

Laverton Cold Storage (LCS) is a family owned and operated company located in the warehousing hub of Melbourne. LCS has been providing cold storage services to the Australian food industry for over 35 years. Due to unprecedented demands from the companies local and international clients, the owners decided to move forward with this 6,700m2 warehouse and association office expansion to facilitate its short term storage needs of meat/poultry/seafood products for international export. The fully racked warehouse has a 6000 pallets freezer capacity as well as cross dock facilities. The semi frozen/frozen products can be stored at -20°C or colder. The building achieves full compliance with HACCP (ISO9001 quality accreditation) and is also DAFF approved for the storage and freezing for meat, dairy, seafood and poultry products.

The approach

The evaluation of the alternative design solution was based on a quantitative risk assessment. The code provision for a wet pipe sprinkler system in a freezer environment presented functional challenges in relation to system operability, reliability and effectiveness. Part of the alternative design was to provide a more reliable means of automatic detection, occupant warning and fire authority notification in order to enable prompt occupant evacuation and fire service response. The risk based assessment also considered fire separation measures in order to segregate areas identified as containing a higher fire hazard.

Fire/smoke and evacuation modelling was also adopted to measure occupant and fire-fighter tenability limits. This project was successfully delivered during December 2015.