In January 2021, a catastrophic fire ravaged the western open bay bulk grain store at the R&H Hall storage facility in Ringaskiddy, Cork. In response, R&H Hall engaged PUNCH to spearhead the design for the reconstruction of this strategically significant storage facility.
In addition to our Project Management expertise, PUNCH was appointed as the Civil and Structural Engineers, Assigned Certifiers, and PDSP for this reconstruction of this bulk storage facility.
Our role as Project Manager involved the procurement of various design team members, including a Quantity Surveyor, Fire Consultant, and M&E Consultant. We also navigated the project through the necessary statutory approvals, including securing planning permission for modifications to the original structure to ensure compliance with current standards.
We led the detailed design process and played a key role in selecting the main contractor, overseeing the construction phase, which had to be completed within a stringent timeline.
The initial construction phase was successfully finished within an 8-month timeframe, allowing the store to reopen for grain storage by January 2023, just two years after the fire that rendered the building unusable. The entire construction project, including all mechanical conveyors for a centralised intake building, was completed within 12 months. Given the scale of the work required within such a tight schedule, PUNCH maintained close oversight to ensure early identification of all critical path activities and the achievement of key programme milestones.
The western store building is an open bay storage warehouse which consists of an open centre aisle with 5No storage bays located to each side of this centre aisle.
The building is approximately 160m in length and 80m in width with a total area of approximately 12,800m2 under roof. The building has a storage capacity of approximately 45,000 tonnes which is very significant in scale in a national context and its re-construction within a timely manner was important from a national food security perspective.
