BCA Bedford Expansion

The existing Bedford site was dealing with significantly increased vehicle numbers than originally designed for when first constructed and even with the exceptionally well managed ‘bumper to bumper’ parking arrangements already in place, an additional storage area was required.

An adjoining plot of land had already been ear-marked for development as park of the wider business park and so provided the obvious choice for BCA’s expansion. The scope of the project was to create additional hard standing for storage with valeting facilities and a standalone office building to centralise and expand the number of existing administration services.

The large expanse of hard standing required careful appraisal of proposed levels, also giving consideration to minimal gradients to facilitate the way in which BCA manage their stock of vehicles. Due to heavy usage of the site and constant vehicle movements, careful consideration was given to the typically more mundane elements of construction such as drainage channels and silt traps.

As the site was formally on the periphery of a Royal Ordinance Factory, detailed surveys were undertaken in high risk zones for potential UXO devices, one such device was potentially identified, but upon further investigation was simply found to be an old oil drum.

As part of the SuDS strategy, the main site areas were permitted to have unrestricted discharge, with the effect of the additional run-off generated from the development being accommodated with improvements to the infrastructure forming part of the adjoining balancing lakes/wetlands.