SingPost Regional eCommerce Logistics Hub

The SingPost Regional eCommerce Logistics Hub is strategically located at 37/39 Greenwich Drive in Tampines Logistics Park.

The project—with a proposed gross floor area of 553,000 square feet (51,375 square metres)—is a single-user industrial development with two main blocks. Block A comprises a three-storey integrated logistics facility with ground floor loading/unloading bays and a ramp-up warehouse on the second and third floors with driveways and loading/unloading areas. The floor-to-floor height ranges from 9 to 10.5 metres. Part of the roof storey is used as an open-to-sky car park. Block B is an eight-storey building consisting of a canteen on the first floor, warehouse storage facilities on the second to fifth floors, and ancillary offices on the sixth to eighth floors.

IMPROVING SUSTAINABILITY: USING LOCALLY DEVELOPED MATERIALS
In line with BCA’s productivity and sustainability vision, the architect and the builder have explored the use of precast wall panels with a 12-metre wide span for the building envelope/façade. This lightweight architectural precast sandwich wall panel was developed locally by an internal team and manufactured in a neighbouring country. It is known as engineered cement composite (ECC) wall–a hybrid of engineered cement composites and autoclaved aerated concrete. It is lightweight with thermal insulation properties, highly sustainable and was awarded a good rating by the Singapore Green Building Council. These precast wall panels greatly shortened the construction time compared to the time it would have taken via traditional brick-and-mortar methods.

ACCOMODATING PROJECT CONSTRAINTS
There were requirements concerning the needs and workflow of the end users, such as specific headroom heights for warehouse operations. In addition to the usual requirements from the Building and Construction Authority (BCA), there were also requirements from the Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA). As the site is adjacent to the Paya Lebar military airbase, there were constraints to consider in relation to military security—such as building height restriction in relation to aircraft flight path and line of sight from the building to the airbase. The design was constantly reviewed in order to accommodate these various requirements. An example is the provision of windows facing the Paya Lebar airbase–opaque glass was used to allow light into the building, while at the same time restricting views into the airbase.

The project team of architects, engineers and builders also implemented building information modelling (BIM) as a coordination tool for the duration of the construction, resolving the various technical constraints between the various disciplines. With BIM, productivity and coordination were greatly improved.