Sainsbury’s Framework

Sainsbury's Cardigan

We were contracted to help enable the construction of a projected new Sainsbury’s store in Cardigan. Sainsbury’s had acquired a plot of land with a sloping profile for development. In order to facilitate the building of a new supermarket on the site, Sainsbury’s hired a contractor to level the site and construct an access road.

However, due to the failure of the soil-nailed retaining walls constructed by this original contractor, the initial site-levelling process was unsuccessful. In fact, construction could not even commence because the site continued to subside.

It was at this point that Sainsbury’s brought in Careys and tasked us with undertaking works to restabilise the site. On this project, we were responsible for:

• Stabilising the northern slope, through the construction of a 25m high bank of lime-stablised earth that utilised a shear key vibro column to prevent further slippage
• Regrading the western slope
• Stabilising the southern slope, with the use of gabion baskets
• Installing approximately 300m of drainage, as well as soft landscaping works

The Sainsbury’s Pineham Distribution Centre is a 190,000m2 carbon neutral, cost-efficient facility that services the Midlands and south-east England. Careys was appointed principal contractor on a 12-week, design and build contract aimed at increasing the capacity of the depot by installing nine pod dock loaders.

This project required extensive planning, as the works took place in a live environment, and it was our responsibility to make sure that our presence did not impact Sainsbury’s daily operations. We achieved this goal by temporarily installing an 8m high wall that acted as a partition for the duration of our works.

Additionally, in the pre-construction phase, we collaborated with the design team to find and implement an appropriate solution that ensured that utility services did not have to be diverted. Also, despite the presence of ammonia on-site and the fact that we needed to carry out our work in confined areas – with temperatures inside the chiller systems ranging between 0 and 5C – we earned an exemplary health and safety record on this project.

Our retail teams have worked nationwide to deliver ‘click and collect’ works for Sainsbury’s which largely entails the modification of store car parks, sign erection and white lining works.

To deliver the works to the highest standards of quality and safety whilst minimising disruption to customers, our teams work closely with Sainsbury’s store teams and their partners to carry out early planning and establish a bespoke plan for each live site location. We have five small teams, comprising individuals with extensive skills and experience in delivering high volumes of small works contracts to exceptional standards in expedient manner.

We completed an average ten sites each week across the programme to meet the ‘go-live’ dates as part of Sainsbury’s roll-out of the ‘click and collect’ service nationally to their customers.