Lely agrotech company expansion

138 Pre-cast foundation blocks 4800 m of foundation beams

The Lely Industries company is expanding substantially. This process involves building new offices and a production hall. The extension of the premises is on the site where the former production halls, dating back to the 1960s, once stood. The surface area covered is 33,000 square metres in total. 8,000 square metres of this will be devoted to office space.

Among other things, Lely produces robotic milking systems for the agricultural sector. The company has 1,600 workers, around 1,000 of whom work in Maassluis. The office buildings will be 15 metres high, while the production hall will be almost 10 metres high. The building will be highly sustainable, not least due to the addition of around 6,000 square metres of solar panels and a ground source heat pump.

Vroom Betonbouw's largest combined project

Never before has Vroom Betonbouw worked on such a sizeable challenge as this. Apart from the large scale this project, worth millions, is also a challenge in terms of planning. Both the preparation and construction periods are short. It is this in particular that makes working with pre-cast elements so attractive. The load-bearing capacity is provided by the stratum of sand at a depth of around 30 metres. The assembled pre-cast structure is supported by 1,860 vibrated piles. The vibrated piles were installed in situ. This meant that they could be cut to length on the building site.

Pre-cast foundations

The foundations for the expansion as a whole are made of pre-cast concrete elements. The products that we use are large and heavy, pre-cast in Zwijndrecht and then transported to Maassluis. The basic framework is made up of 138 pre-cast foundation blocks and nearly 5 kilometres of pre-cast foundation beams. The scope of the work also includes a pre-cast lift shaft pit, and there are also several pre-cast dock-levellers (delivery platforms) on site. Anchors and reinforcement bars are inserted into the elements, so that our partners in the project, Mammoet and Hollandia can attach the concrete and steel superstructure to them. The structure includes such features as a ramp so that, once the project is complete, employees and visitors can drive up to the gigantic parking deck on the roof. Large numbers of solar panels will be installed there, too.

BREEAM ‘Outstanding’

The building is fully certified by BREEAM, and has been rated ‘Outstanding'. This certification was attained at an earlier stage, in phase 1 in 2014. So all our products and raw materials were certified before starting the construction process. A building with a BREEAM-NL certificate is also a healthy building. That means that the builders have taken into account the internal climate, ventilation, light and volatile organic compounds, for instance.