Quarantine Greenhouse

Croudace Greenhouses International Pty Ltd engaged Osborn Consulting Engineers Pty Ltd to provide structural framing design, slab & foundation design & certification for a high technology quarantine greenhouse project for CSIRO at Black Mountain in Canberra.

Osborn Consulting worked closely with Croudace Greenhouses to ensure structural and BCA compliance was achieved throughout all aspects of the project.

Commercial Property Development

Osborn Consulting Engineers were engaged to provide structural and civil engineering services to bring this project to completion, as the structure had been partially completed by previous owners and required both finalisation of construction and reconfiguration for new tenants. The property is a prestigious 8000m2  commercial development adjacent to the Gold Coast Motorway with multiple office and warehouse tenancies. OCE Director Peter Osborn led the design team for the project, attending site regularly and inspecting the progressive works.

Developing technical guidelines and best practice extension toolbox for greenhouse construction and safe operationContemporary Australian Country Homestead

Osborn Consulting Engineers collaborated with FERM Engineering, RMCG and Doyle’s Construction Lawyers to complete this project for Horticulture Innovation Australia. Marcel Olivotto of OCE worked with the client and sub consultants to complete the project in 2 parts over 12 months. In Part 1 of the project the team developed technical guidelines for greenhouses and grow structures for inclusion in the National Construction Code (NCC). The project team has developed measures for horticultural building classification and a provisional framework to reduce classification ambiguity and irrelevant NCC provisions. This particularly relates to the areas of fire and egress. While Part 2 developed a toolbox containing vital information and resources relating to the design, approvals, construction and safe operation of greenhouses in Australia; a tool specifically designed for growers and the protected vegetable cropping industry. The toolbox fact sheets are available at www.greenhousetoolbox.com

Contemporary Australian Country Homestead

Geoff Cook Architect was provided with a clear brief to design this new home: 'Create a contemporary Australian country homestead to capture panoramic views over the Lyndhurst stud farm and Condamine River plains of Toolburra'

Osborn Consulting Engineers worked with Geoff and GETM Constructions to meet this brief, which features soaring ceilings and three floor levels to complement the existing contours of the site. The end result is a beautiful home blending contemporary and classic architectural styles which sits lightly within its rural landscape.

Clean Lines but Comfortable Home

Osborn Consulting Engineers worked in conjunction with other local businesses GETM Constructions and Geoff Cook Architect to help make this dream home a reality for the Hetherington family. The modern aesthetic was achieved with rendered blockwork walls, internal cast concrete stairs and concealed roof.  The front door opens into a dramatic double height living and dining area with two bays of bi-fold doors bringing the outside in. Upstairs the open walkway acts as both access and an architectural feature. 

Lobby & Viewing Platform

Osborn Consulting Engineers were engaged by Winton Shire Council to inspect and assess the structural stability of the existing internal rammed earth walls at the Dinosaur Trackways Building, located at Lark Quarry, 120km west of Winton. The heritage listed facility provides protection and public viewing of the unique 95 million years old dinosaur tracks found by opal miners during excavations at the site. The rammed earth walls were found to be in poor structural condition and it was recommended to the Council that a section of the walls around the lobby  be demolished  and the remaining walls be structurally reinforced. JM Pearce Architects were engaged to provide architectural design for a new lobby with extended viewing platform and  presentation lighting was upgraded by Rixon Design. Protection of the trackways was supervised by palaeontologist Alex Cook, successfully executed by the builder NF Corbett. Osborn Consulting provided principal consultant and contract administration services together with specialist structural engineering. After completion of the works, the popular facility experienced a significant upsurge in visitor numbers.

Multi Storey Classroom Blocks

Over the past several years Osborn Consulting Engineers has provided structural and civil design for two multistorey classroom blocks at Assumption College, Warwick. Osborn Consulting worked closely with architect, Ian Kauter and building contractor, DMC Constructions to provide the school with practicable buildings that suit their growing school population while retaining the appearance of a smaller school with a strong community spirit.

The most recent building which was completed in mid-2015 housed a modern catering facility and tuckshop and a male and female change room on the ground level with three spacious classrooms on the first level.  Both buildings were designed to match the construction techniques and appearance of the existing school buildings.

Osborn Consulting takes great pride in providing local schools with engineering services that meets their specific and unique needs. The firm also has longstanding agreements with several local schools and community groups to provide students with valuable vocational experience. This experience provides students with guidance and insight into a challenging yet rewarding career as an engineer or design technician. 

Environmental Education Centre and Café

Osborn Consulting Engineers and JM Pearce Architects won a Gold Award and the Overall Award of Excellence at the 2009 Ipswich City Council Design Awards for their work on the new Queens Park Environmental Education Centre and Café in Queens Park, Ipswich.

Features of the Osborn Consulting Design work included:

• Use of environmentally sustainable materials.

• Ensuring the structure did not impact adversely on root systems of existing mature trees — including installation of a floating driveway over Moreton Bay Fig tree root systems.

• Water collection systems.

• Stormwater run-off treatment using bio-retention systems.

Structural Steelwork

Forster is a pleasant town on the northern coast of New South Wales. It is perhaps a little surprising that such a modest sized town has a new Bunnings Hardware Store, but there is a lot of building going on in the area.

This Bunnings is unusual in that it has no internal columns. Therefore the portal frames have a clear span of 53 metres, which was a bit of a challenge for Osborn Consulting and our clients, Rimco. Beam depths vary up to 1500mm, at the haunches of the non-standard frames around the main entry.

Concrete Tilt-Up Warehouse

Osborn Consulting carried out the civil and structural engineering design of this free standing retail warehouse development in suburban Brisbane. The simplicity of the concrete tilt-up panel and steel rafter construction makes this a fast and economical form of construction. Osborn Consulting’s client was F.K. Gardiner.

Structural Steelwork

The Capral Facility consists of two enormous industrial buildings with a total floor area of 70,000 square metres, and a two storey office building. Osborn Consulting’s client, Rimco Building Systems, won the structural steel subcontract for the facility in late 2003.

The steelwork had been designed and documented by the project engineer, but the subcontract was based on the steelwork being re-designed by Rimco and Osborn Consulting. Contract negotiations between Rimco and Watpac, the builder, concluded only a few weeks before the first steel had to be delivered to site, so we had some busy days at that stage of the project. The project also had a few technical challenges for our engineers, with clear spans up to 54 metres, awnings up to 14m wide, and large distances between bracing walls.

Structural Steelwork

City Beach is a chain of surf clothes shops. Some of us, being too old for that style of dress, did not realize what a large operation it is, until we saw the size of its new distribution centre at Murarrie. Osborn Consulting’s contribution to this project was the design of the structural steelwork, in conjunction with our client, Rimco Building Systems.

Structural Steelwork

This cotton store at Lucinda Drive, Port of Brisbane, has a hot dip galvanized steel frame, to protect it from the salt laden air. The building is 79 metres by 96 metres in plan. The building owner is P & O Shipping, and the structural design was by Osborn Consulting for Rimco Building Systems.

Warehouse

This warehouse at Eagle Farm is a modest storage and commercial precinct which offers tenants considerable spacing options and freedom. Osborn Consulting carried out the building design, civil and structural engineering, and commissioned and co-ordinated other consultants through our project management service.

The building has load-bearing tilt-up walls built to the property boundary, steel roof structure and a timber framed mezzanine.

Grandstand

This highly complex structure is in Al-Wathba, on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi. Osborn Consulting was responsible for the structural design of the roof structure, shop drawings of the steel superstructure, and fabric patterns and detailing. Our client was Specialized Architectural Systems. Project architects and engineers were W.S. Atkins and Partners Global.

Townhouses

Halpine Lake is a large townhouse development by A.V. Jennings at Mango Hill, between Brisbane and Redcliffe. Osborn Consulting designed the waffle pod footing and slab system, which was complicated in this case by the sloping site and the numerous steps in the slabs.

The townhouses have light steel framing, with FC and Hebel cladding. Osborn Consulting became involved due to our extensive experience with Hebel products. The framing of the structure was designed by a steel framing subcontractor.

Now a vibrant lakeside community, Halpine Lake Townhouses offer a friendly, welcoming community. This highly desired neighbourhood offers a selection of quality townhouses in a modern setting.

Large Warehouse

Osborn Consulting Engineers designed this large warehouse at Nerang for RCG Builders. The photos show the concrete dado panels with a height of 2 to 2.5 metres up the walls. This is a popular choice to provide secure warehouse walls at an economical cost.

Pretensioned Concrete Ceiling Panels

Legacy Way is a 4.6 kilometre long road tunnel joining Brisbane’s western suburbs with the Inner City Bypass.  While mega-projects such as this are designed and built by consortiums of international companies, Osborn Consulting Engineers has been able to make several contributions to this project.

In this photograph, precast concrete wall panels are being placed under difficult conditions.  Typically for work in tunnels, these difficult conditions are caused by lack of access, and co-ordination with many other services.  Osborn Consulting developed an innovative pretensioned concrete design for these panels, which minimised their weight and hence their ease of handling.

Osborn Consulting also contributed to design of the lifting and handling equipment for the panels, design of pretensioned concrete ceiling panels, and noise barrier panels in the Legacy Way project.

Structural Design

This amphibious drilling platform named Minnie isn’t from a science fiction film but was rather built by Insitu Geotech Services and was overall designed by Alan McConnell, right here on earth.  Minnie is basically an aquatic barge, though it has several exceptional features that many other barges don’t have, it has legs and feet – Minnie has four legs with large circular feet which use a partial vacuum to attach to the riverbed, lake or tailings pond.  While mounted on its legs, the craft can deploy powerful geotechnical probes which would be beyond the capacity of a typical floating barge. While in the water Minnie’s movability emanates from an outboard diesel motor, though when on land it has to be towed.

Osborn Consulting was responsible for the structural design of the chassis of the craft.

Commercial Building

Musgrave Muse is a small office building in Red Hill in Brisbane. It has two storeys of offices above a basement carpark. The exterior of the building was carefully detailed to avoid clashing with the heritage building next door, and traditional Queensland houses in the street. Osborn Consulting’s client was Azuno Developments; the building is now home to Osborn Consulting’s Brisbane Office.

Apartments

This development for the Queensland Government Department of Housing is an illustration of some current public housing policies:

• The appearance of the development is an asset to the street, and cannot be readily identified as public housing.

• The apartment/townhouse type of dwelling allows economical housing that is not on the margins of the city, and out of the reach of public transport.

• The lower storey units are designed for disabled and wheelchair access, since a relatively high proportion of public housing clients have restricted mobility.

Architect: Arc+ Architects

Builder: Northbuild.

Various Structures

Osborn Consulting were involved in the design of various structures at Portside Cruise Ship Terminal, Brisbane. Our clients were Multiplex and Vanguard.

The picture shows decorative shade structures in the pedestrian mall area, with the massive side of a cruise ship visible in the background. Unusually for Osborn Consulting, these shade structures have rigid translucent roof sheeting, rather than fabric.

Other structures included the bus shelter, and the passenger terminal building. The passenger terminal building looks like a historic brick structure, but is in fact a galvanized iron shed, covered in cleverly printed vinyl fabric.

Structural Engineering

The Met nightclub opened in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane in 2007. It was created out of a disused cinema, shops and a low roofed basement. The floor of the basement had to be lowered while the three storey building above it continued operation. The “before” picture here shows excavation down the sides of the building foundations that are still carrying the weight of the building above. This aspect of the construction required Osborn Lane staff to exercise careful engineering judgement, to enable the project to proceed while ensuring the safety of the building structure.

Another challenge was maintaining the stability of the old brick retaining wall visible at the right of the “before” photo, when the floor adjacent to it was lowered by a metre. The retaining wall pre-dated the remainder of the building, and had been incorporated into the structure of the existing building forty years ago.