Caunton Engineering worked for main contractor Simons Construction, on a new multi-million pound retail development in Bargoed, Wales. The Morrisons store sits on a plateau which has been carved out of the side of the Bargoed hillside. Its elevated position gives it far reaching views across the surrounding valleys. The store comprises a ground floor under croft car park for 400 cars, with the main Morrisons retail deck positioned above this, which also includes a large car park deck. Above the Morrisons store are a series of decks which comprise plant areas and a selection of independent retail units, the latter aligning through with the existing street level and will provide a continuation of the shop frontage and a new suspended market area.

The plateau was formed in part with a contiguous piled wall, which is approximately 11m high x 130m long, and was reinforced with additional screw anchors to secure the wall during the excavation stage. The steel structure framing the store comprises over 1000te of structural steelwork. This was designed by Caunton Engineering, and has been designed to connect into the contiguous piled wall at set intervals along its length and will offer full support to the wall at its head in the final condition. This resulted in the need for an impressive 24 metre deep horizontal truss which had to be concealed within the retail ––unit’s floors. The truss was required to span the full length of the wall and connected into it using cast-in plates. The massive loads were transferred through the truss by large welded nodes, some of which facilitated 12 incoming members.

In addition this project was fully managed and constructed using BIM methodology. This enabled the Architect's and Engineer's models to be fully integrated with CEL's detail and design models, an example of which is illustrated. This aided the development process on the project and allowed complex geometry and data to be easily transferred amongst the design team. Design Team Meetings were far more productive as CEL could take integrated models with them and present them onsite using projectors which allowed the team to realise the problem, and thereby collectively find solutions.