We visited the site on 6th august 2010.The site is the shopping centre in high street in Toowoomba. This shopping centre is made for the local resident's b/c there are few shopping plaza nearby. This project is designed by Chris Lucas he is also engineer on site and the construction is done by Jim Kelly group. The building is single storey with basement. The building was design to accommodate approximately 100 residents. The total cost for this project is $50millions.More than 30 workers are employed and they are working 6 days per week. The construction has been started in May 2010 and will finish in July 2011.there are total 58 weeks of work The major stakeholders of the project include: Jim Kelly group, National Properties groups (developers, individual owner of the property, local residents of the area and the local government.
The main objective of this project is to provide a commercial living space to the local resident. Also it is hoped to provide many jobs vacancies. This is because the building will have parts of it as shops, hotel, band many others hence employment will often be available.
Location of the Building
The location of the site is high street Toowoomba, queensl and, Australia.
The general condition of the site is good since there is flat area. There is no hilly area around the site location. It is located on the flat topography. This makes it suitable for all the team including workers and the plants and equipments used on the construction site.
This building is surrounded by no of houses which is a source of protection against wind and sun coming from the north to the south or from the East to the west.
Geotechnical and Environmental Studies
The designers and engineers have done intensive investigation in order to find out about the geotechnical conditions of the site and how can affect the design of the building. A site investigation, using cored test holes and standard penetrometers test was done. The new building is located along the area of unsuitable overlaying soil with very low plasticity soil in a low shrinking. The soil is possibly the major factor with the for this building the engineers have only built foundation which is seen in domestic housing in the area, this could be achieved by the soil low plasticity , proximity of the ground water table and past stressing of the location allowed shallow foundation which is suitable by federal slandered and would proved the support needed for the wind loading, rainfall patterns, possibility of earth quick and the possibility of snow or ice on the foundation and all over the building.
Building Design
The building has been designed with the help of geotechnical report result which is describe as follow, for the building with allowable pressure of 400 KPA footing are designed.
Generally the workmanship and the building materials shall be in according with required of the current edition including ...