Steel Structures & Urban Farming

Purpose-built engineered steel structures extend what a warehouse can do beyond what standard racking allows, unlocking storage capacity and efficiency within an existing footprint. At the furthest end of this spectrum sits the rack-clad building, where the racking itself becomes the structure. This approach suits high-bay automated warehouses particularly well, delivering a faster build and a lower cost per pallet position.

For non-standard briefs, the engineering team works with hot-rolled structural profiles, custom connections, and atypical geometries, and can design to seismic or wind load requirements under European or American standards. SPAN can also assess and validate any racking or structural component — regardless of original supplier — for load capacity, reusability, and continued safe operation. That independent validation capability is useful whenever a facility changes use, increases load, or integrates new equipment.

Vertical farming shares many of the same engineering demands as warehousing — maximizing usable volume within a fixed footprint, supporting substantial distributed loads across multiple levels, and integrating with mechanical systems. SPAN designs the steel infrastructure for both, applying the same load analysis, connection engineering, and compliance framework whether the facility stores pallets or produces food.