Cainiao Smart Gateway Logistics Centre

Our award-winning structural design, together with our smart solutions, have shaped one of the largest and most technically advanced logistics facilities of its kind in the region at Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA).

Location

Hong Kong

Client

Hong Kong Cingleot Investment Management Limited

Architect

Aedas

Project Status

Completed

Awards

HKIE Structural Excellence Award 2024 (Hong Kong Non-Residential Project – Grand Award)

No. of floors

Length of the building

>300m

Above ground height

118m

Located in the South Cargo Precinct of Hong Kong International Airport, Cainiao Smart Gateway is developed by a joint venture led by Cainiao Network, a subsidiary of Alibaba Group, which includes China Aviation Group and Yuantong Express as major stakeholders.

With a total GFA of more than 380,000 sq.m spreading over 12 floors, it is one of the largest and most technologically advanced logistics centres in Hong Kong. The centre is designed to cater to both air cargo (B2B) and e-commerce (B2C) logistics, aligning with HKIA’s cargo development strategy.

Collaborated with project architect Aedas and contractor Build King in this project and served as the structural, geotechnical and civil engineering consultant, our innovative design has earned us the Grand Award under HKIE Structural Division – Structural Excellence Award 2024.

Separately, to make this centre a truly ‘smart gateway’, we also provided centralised IoT solution including unified communication system, smart security system, indoor positioning, facial recognition system, BIM smart operation and maintenance system, access control system and vehicle management system.

Tailored design for heavy loads

To handle heavy loads from the superstructure while minimising the number of piles required and speeding up construction, we used large diameter bored piles with a higher capacity. This approach reduced the overall number of piles needed and accelerated the construction schedule.

The structural system chosen was a conventional slab-beam-column system without core walls. This design provided flexibility for future alterations and additions, as well as logistic development, ensuring that the facility could adapt to changing demands over time.

Our design also features stiff beam-column frame to control building movement under wind and enhance structural efficiency. Expansion joints are adopted to reduce thermal stress as the length of the building exceeded 300m.

To ensure super-flatness and levelness in the warehouse area, we adopted a 75mm late cast wearing slab on top of the structural slab, bonded to simplify the construction and improve reliability. The structural slab was redesigned to reduce the thickness while considering, minimising loading impact on the foundation and maintaining headroom requirements. A repeated floor system was implemented to increase structural standardization, providing a uniform layout and reducing difficulty in logistic equipment installation.

To accommodate heavy goods vehicles (HGV), double-looped car ramps were constructed at certain floors to address slope restraints. The minimum column spacing and open floor layout were reinforced to allow easy HGV access to all floors. C80 high strength concrete was used due to the heavy gravity load, ensuring sufficient spacing for HGV access.

Enhancing buildability and constructability

To shorten substructure construction programme in tackling massive construction, we adopted ‘one pile to one column’ design to simplify and standardise pile cap and tie beam system. Our ELS design uses king posts embedded in bored pile system to minimise sheet pile number and strut length. We adopted table form falsework system for floor structure construction, and system formwork and module working platform mobilised by lifting operation to reduce repeated erection and dismantling process.

Smart premium logistics centre

At the heart of this smart gateway is the IoT-enabled intelligent operation centre (IOC) platform. We have adopted interface matrix in the design to ensure the interfacing of systems from different vendors, such as fire services system and surveillance system, is handled smoothly.

Our system design also adopted the concept of situation awareness, focusing on the ability to recognise and understand a situation or environment and identify possible threats. With a 3D graphical user interface and a smart dashboard, the facility’s operation and maintenance is facilitated by instant responses and error free processes, as the operator will be informed and able to react in a timely manner on any incident in the logistics centre.

For a logistics centre, two of the key planning concerns are the potential bottleneck at the vehicle entrance and vehicles parking in the wrong slots. The vehicle management system has some features to tackle these issues. For example, there will be a truck dock reservation system, which allows drivers to use their mobile phone to reserve parking spaces, while the GPS technology will inform the estimated time of arrival (ETA) to enable a reliable prediction of vehicle arrival time, hence the packing availability.

A parking guidance system is also implemented in the warehouse with LED display panels to guide vehicles to their parking slots. Contactless parking technologies is also adopted in this project, with license plate recognition, in-app payment and auto settlement to streamline the whole parking process and avoid bottleneck.

Sustainability in action

Our structural design optimised outdoor natural ventilation performance by air ventilation study, and enhanced urban greenery by providing overall site coverage of up to 30%.

We also employed high-performance building envelop and systems to achieve overall energy use reduction. Double low-e IGU window wall was utilised to enhance indoor thermal comfort and reduce cooling energy use.

The smart platform we designed also contribute to sustainability. With big data analytics and various kind of IoT sensors, AI technology can enable energy optimisation and predictive equipment maintenance for better energy saving performance.