Safe Parking at Westfield Stratford City

Berry Systems installed one of their largest ever car park safety barrier projects at Westfield Stratford City with over 7 kilometres of Berry Beam barrier, all mounted on Berry’s impact absorbing spring steel buffers. Westfield Stratford City is a new metropolitan capital for East London and the next chapter in retail development. With over 250 shops, 70 places to eat and drink, three hotels and leisure facilities including bowling, cinema and the UKs largest casino, it is Europe’s largest urban mall. The centre has 5000 parking spaces across 2 integral and 1 adjacent multi-storey car parks. That’s made up of just over 2000 spaces above the mall, 1300 spaces below it and over 1500 in a stand alone multi-storey car park next to John Lewis. This is fewer than the 13000 spaces at sites like nearby Bluewater and Lakeside malls but that’s because those are out of town. Westfield Stratford City is not. It is served by Stratford International and Stratford Regional railway stations as well as the Docklands Light Railway, the London Underground and numerous bus routes. Visitors are encouraged to use public transport where possible. The centre has achieved the Safer Parking Scheme Park Mark status and aim to provide an excellent parking experience with innovative systems such as their Findmycar phone app and red/green LED indicators on each parking bay. Additionally, Blue Badge bays are denoted by blue LEDs and mother and toddler bays by pink ones. With that attention to detail it’s not surprising that the safety barriers were very carefully specified by architects Buchan Group. The car park structures are metal framed with concrete decks with an exterior expanded metal mesh surround and cladding. All floors have Berry safety beams mounted on their RB1X and GH spring steel buffers to provide full perimeter protection to BS 6399 and BS6180 as well as meeting the latest recommendations of the Institution of Structural Engineers (ISE) and the Institute of Civil Engineers (ICE). On most floors this is behind the decorative cladding but some internal perimeters have no cladding and so the safety barrier also features an integral handrail extension plus anti-climb mesh infill for pedestrian safety. All the ramps in the two overground car parks have Berry Beam barriers many of them curved to match the varying radius of the ramps. On tighter bends and at the ramps exits chevron signs have been mounted directly to the barriers to give drivers a visual warning. The smaller, underground car park is on two levels with concrete ramp barriers. However the ramp returns and split level areas are all protected by Berry Barriers mounted on RB1X spring steel buffers with handrail extensions and anti-climb mesh. Berry Systems MD, Steve Dunn, said “The Westfield Stratford City project demonstrates many of the virtues of the Berry safety barrier systems and our ability to supply and install barriers for large, complex projects on time and on budget.” For further information call 01902 491100 or visit www.berrysystems.co.uk.

For more information on Safe Parking at Westfield Stratford City talk to Berry Systems