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IKEA Cologne

Facts and Figures
Company PORR GmbH & Co. KGaA
Principal IKEA Verwaltungs GmbH
Location Köln - Germany
Type Shopping centres
Runtime 04.2008 - 01.2009

Germany’s largest IKEA store.

After a construction period of just ten months, on the site of the previous Cologne/Butzbach military airfield, Germany’s largest IKEA outlet at that time opened in March 2009 with a sales area of 25,500m. The combined space of the market hall and furniture showroom is the same size as two football fields. At the time of completion, the Cologne store was the fifth-largest outlet worldwide and boasted the largest self-service area ever built by the Swedish company anywhere in the world. Thanks to our extensive experience in realising IKEA stores, we were able to hand over the outlet to the client on schedule, with IKEA Germany stating that it was the most attractive store in the country to date.
 
Guaranteed deadlines and construction.
The PORR Frankfurt branch office acquired this tender in 2008 on the basis of a special offer that guaranteed precise adherence to the construction schedule. The building measuring 210m by 140m rests on a reinforced concrete skeleton structure of prefabricated support beams, main and secondary girders in the basic grid of 8m by 8m and maximum spans of up to 24m. Underneath the car park storeys are two underground escape tunnels with scavenged air that connect to the inside emergency staircases. The central sprinkler and technology system measures 80m by 40m and is located under the delivery area.

Overcoming logistical challenges.
Construction work began just ten days after the tender was awarded, with works on the central sprinkler and technology system starting in parallel. A construction period of a mere eight weeks had been allocated for the in-situ concrete construction. The dependency on the main building works and the fixed deadline for the start of the heating phase required precise, highly streamlined logistics on the construction site. 

Fitting the prefabricated, reinforced concrete parts was realised with three crews and heavy-lifting gear; at peak times as many as four installation crews were involved. In addition to the normal construction site traffic, up to 50 articulated lorries and special transporters delivered to the site on a daily basis. Coordinating the delivery of the prefabricated parts with the construction of the outdoor facilities posed another logistical challenge. The client installed the building services parallel to our construction work. Three months before the completion deadline IKEA had already started to install its warehouse logistics and stock its furniture showrooms, the SB hall, the market hall and the time-consuming cash register system. This required constant coordination between planning, construction works, building services, IKEA furnishings and those building the outdoor facilities. All of the preparatory tasks such as deadline planning, the fitting and manufacturing concepts of the prefabricated parts, and the subsequent installation of the construction components were carried out by the PORR team in Frankfurt, who were responsible for the entire execution.