Warehouse Design for E-Commerce: What Changed After 2020

A decade ago, a warehouse brief was mostly about clear height and floor loading. On our E-Fulfillment Centre work for Aldar in Dubai South, the brief also had to account for VNA and standard-aisle racking side by side, ASRS for both pallets and bins, and conveyor and sorter systems that needed structural penetrations planned from the first design pass.

The practical effect is that warehouse structural grids are now driven as much by material-handling equipment vendors' spec sheets as by the building code. We now bring racking and conveyor consultants into structural coordination earlier than we would have five years ago, because retrofitting a column grid around an ASRS system after the fact is not a small change order.