Frequently Asked Questions

FAQ - Design Advisory

Architectural design is the biggest driver of rental value, with AWH-designed industrial sheds leasing at around 30% above market rentals, while 10 m plus (ideally 12 m) clear height, FM2/VDF flooring, and one dock per 5,000 sqft help command premium rents.

Hybrid and flex layouts, supported by DTCP/CMDA approvals, improve occupancy by accommodating multiple occupier types, enabling buildings to lease faster, higher, and for longer.

The ideal span is 24 metres by 16 metres, allowing wider clear spans with fewer pillars to maximise storage efficiency and pallet capacity. Combined with FM2 flooring, modern PEB sheds using Jack beam engineering support VNA and selective racking for more efficient warehouse operations.

Master planning allocates shared infrastructure across an industrial park to support multiple buildings, ensuring compliance, cost efficiency, and future expansion. In contrast, standalone shed design focuses on maximising a single Grade A building within one plot while meeting statutory and operational requirements.

Design for a clear height of 10 m plus — ideally 12 m. In Grade A terms that is a ceiling centre height of 40–50 ft above plinth level and a side height of 33 ft minimum, ideally 40 ft. Height is what lets an occupier add a racking tier, run an EOT crane, fit a mezzanine and manage temperature.

Natural lighting and ventilation reduce lighting and cooling costs by using translucent roof and wall panels, skylights, ridge vents, side air vents, windows with grills, and roof ventilators while maintaining a minimum 150 lux lighting level. Combined with suitable R-value insulation, these features improve airflow, reduce heat build-up, and make the shed more energy-efficient and cost-effective

The structural engineer designs the foundation and frame based on actual building loads, coordinating with the PEB contractor and MEP design to ensure proper pillar, footing, and structural planning. Foundations and floors are also designed for operational loads, including EOT cranes, with floor capacities of 6 MT/sqm for warehouses and 15 MT/sqm for factories.

Dock design is planned during the test-fit stage, with the Grade A standard of one loading/unloading dock per 5,000 sqft, alternate dock levellers, 7 m canopies, and 1.2–1.3 m dock height to ensure efficient truck movement and loading. Automated shutters, emergency exits, and optimised dock numbers improve operational efficiency while balancing apron space for vehicle circulation.

Fire safety is integrated from the initial design with a mandatory fire hydrant system, sprinkler provision, fire-tender access setbacks, automated shutters linked to fire alarms, and emergency exits with way markers. The layout follows NBC norms, includes ESFR sprinklers where required, and secures a provisional Fire NoC during approvals and the final Fire NoC before occupation.

Multi-level industrial facilities use reinforced concrete structures with Ramp Access, Cargo Elevator, or Multi-Level Docking models to support heavier loads and efficient vertical movement. They also include mezzanine spaces, achieve 70–75% storage efficiency, maintain 10 m plus (ideally 12 m) clear height, and often provide basement parking for delivery vehicles.

Design determines construction cost, which typically ranges from Rs 1,600–2,200 per sqft, while a Grade A shed in Chennai costs about Rs 2,000/sqft compared to Rs 1,125 for Grade B.

Although design costs only Rs 15–18/sqft for about 15 drawings, it defines every specification and enables BOQ preparation, tendering, and value engineering to optimise project costs.

Specify a roof slope of 1:10 to 1:20 — a 10–20 degree downward pitch — selected according to local climatic conditions. The roof itself should be standing seam: seamless, screwless and leak-proof galvanised steel, with provision for solar panels on the outer side and insulation on the inner side (XLPE 9 mm foam sheets), supplemented by translucent panels for daylight and ridge vents for air exchange. On structure, modern PEB sheds follow Jack beam engineering, delivering wide spans with fewer pillars to enhance storage efficiency — the ideal span being 24 m × 16 m. That combination gives rapid drainage, a leak-free envelope, and a solar-ready, column-light industrial shed.

Build sustainability into the envelope rather than bolting it on later. The standing-seam galvanised roof carries provision for solar panels on the outer side and insulation on the inner side (XLPE 9 mm foam), so roofs can be fully utilised to make the building power surplus — solar can reduce running costs substantially. Skylights and translucent panels in the roof and side walls cut the lighting load against a 150 lux target; ridge and turbo ventilators clear heat. Rainwater harvesting is mandatory, alongside storm water drains and an STP / septic tank / water recycling system. At master-plan level, green zones, landscaped areas and open spaces are planned deliberately — OSR must be planned effectively, not left over as residual land.

A warehouse is designed around storage and throughput; a factory is designed around process sequence and machine loads.

Warehouse design maximises cubic space: ceiling height to accommodate racking and vertical stacking (10 m plus, ideally 12 m), FM2 / VDF flooring rated at 6 MT/sqm, a 1.2 m plinth with dock levellers, loading bays and canopies, and loading/unloading performed outside the building. Internal flow is then set by the racking system — block stacking for bulk, selective racking for high SKU variety, drive-in, push-back and pallet-flow for density, ASRS and mezzanine levels for automated e-commerce picking.

Factory design serves the line. It needs high-tension power, an EOT crane to carry heavy loads, and a far stronger floor at 15 MT/sqm, with the foundation built to sustain crane loads. Shutters go above 18 ft so containers can move inside the shed, and loading/unloading happens within the factory itself via ramps. The layout must allocate sufficient space for raw material storage, the manufacturing line and finished goods storage in sequence, plus ETP/STP, transformer yards and considerably more worker amenities.

One optimises pallet positions per square foot; the other optimises the production sequence.

The master plan is laid out around trailer movement. The industrial-park infrastructure schedule requires wide and well-developed internal roads, a common entrance with security, common street lighting, and facilities for parking large trailers. Because most warehouses today require access for huge containers and trailers, the access roads must be wide enough to accommodate these heavy vehicles, and the design provides dedicated aprons, turning areas and loading bays so trucks can manoeuvre without blocking through-circulation. Apron depth is a function of the dock layout — more shutters mean more apron area for parking and movement of vehicles for inbound and outbound logistics. Road widths and turning circles are then set to the vehicle types the park will serve and to the sanctioning authority’s requirements for the plot.

Market analysis is what tells a speculative developer what to build. An investor constructing a building to lease does not know what the end tenant requires, and an architect can only design to the brief he is given — so the brief itself has to carry the market intelligence of WHAT TO BUILD. In the workflow, market analysis and spec-setting based on tenant requirement precedes the test fit and master plan. That intelligence comes from interacting with tenants daily and understanding their exact needs in the specific micro-market, so hybrid buildings and micro-market studies produce tenant-preferred designs, facilities and amenities. It is also a vacancy hedge: buildings designed for multiple industrial uses, which can equally be used as warehouses, stay occupied.

A multi-tenant park is designed for flexibility and shared services; a single-occupier facility is designed to one brief.

The park is master-planned around common infrastructure — entry and exit points with security, internal access roads and lighting, parking spaces, green spaces, water sources and lines, power infrastructure, fire-fighting and safety areas, driver rest areas and toilets — serving a mix of industries alongside warehousing and cold storage. The buildings within it are deliberately flexible for adding and reducing spaces quickly and easily: flex and hybrid formats with smaller modular units, flexible internal layouts for different tenants and easy internal reconfiguration, so a departing tenant can be replaced without rebuilding the shell.

The single dedicated occupier facility is effectively a built-to-suit: designed and constructed for one tenant on a long lease, usually 9–15 years, where the development must be adequate to the needs of the end-user and the infrastructure perfect to that requirement. Customisation may include specific column spacing, special floor-load capacity, automation systems, cold-storage areas, large truck docks and higher power availability — the format large e-commerce and logistics occupiers take.

The park optimises shared services and re-lettability; the built-to-suit optimises a single operation.

Transformers and DG sets belong in dedicated open-area provisions on the master plan, clear of the shed and clear of the fire setbacks. The design rule is to make provisions in open areas for fire fighting and generators, and to provide space for an EB panel area, office spaces and generators in open space; for factories, space for additional infrastructure such as power transformers and worker areas is planned at layout stage. Transformer, landscaping and common-areas paving is a distinct step in the construction sequence.

Size the yard to the supply. An HT (High Tension) connection — above 11 kV, needed once the load crosses roughly 112 kW / 150 HP, typical for industrial sheds — requires a transformer yard holding the transformer (11 kV/22 kV), an HT panel, an RMU/VCB panel, a metering cubicle and an earthing system. TANGEDCO inspects the transformer yard space and its safety clearances before energising, so reserve the footprint in the drawing. Budget roughly Rs 12–25 lakh for the transformer and Rs 8–15 lakh for the HT panels/RMU.

For back-up, provide a minimum 0.5 KVA generator per 1,000 sqft, sized at about a 0.8 power factor — a 100 kVA DG delivers roughly 80 kW.

Dangerous goods are capable of posing an unreasonable risk to health, safety, property or the environment, and their management starts already in the warehouse — so specialised storage with safety precautions has to be designed in from the outset. Fire provisioning scales with what is stored: sprinklers depend on the material, with ESFR (Early Suppression Fast Response) sprinklers for high-pile storage, alongside the mandatory full hydrant setup, extinguisher slots, and a calculated fire load. Such goods fall under PESO and the pollution control board’s colour zoning — green, orange, red — so pollution NOCs, employee safety procedures and the strictest scrutiny apply, and setbacks must keep fire vehicular movement clear. The overriding design test is that the facility should not be a threat to life and environment.

The brief starts with an outer line drawing and ground coverage check, and the shed is then drawn keeping in mind the setbacks, parking, open space, fire, statutory and operational requirements of the end tenant. Land utilisation is driven by geometry: the land must be rectangular to achieve maximum FSI and ground coverage, with normal FSI in industrial buildings running 0.5 to 0.75. The statutory side is met by reserving adequate outside setbacks for fire vehicular movement, providing parking as per government stipulations, and planning OSR effectively rather than treating it as leftover land. The test fit is where the two reconcile — it computes exactly how much building the plot yields once the mandated setbacks, parking and open space have been taken out.

Rainwater harvesting is a mandatory Grade A specification, designed alongside storm water drains and an STP / septic tank / water recycling system. Roof water is collected through rainwater downpipes, which direct it away from the building — typically from roof guttering to a drainage system or, ideally, to a water harvesting system, which also helps recharge ground water resources. At master-plan level, water sources and lines and water harvesting and disposal are planned across the whole land parcel as common infrastructure, not building by building, so the catchment from every roof and paved area is captured.

 

Allow roughly two to three months of drawing work, then the authority cycle on top. The test fit drawing and overall master plan take 15–30 days for the first initial drawing. Completing all the technical and approval drawings takes a further 30–45 days. The approval set is then submitted for DTCP/CMDA sanction, where the first inspection alone runs 45–60 days, while the PCB’s Consent to Establish takes 60–90 days and department coordination 90–120 days. Running alongside, preparing the BOQ from the technical drawings adds 45–60 days, and tendering it for Civil, PEB and MEP a further 60–75 days. Design fees for the roughly 15 drawings involved run Rs 15–18/sqft.

The 3D rendering is the final visual checkpoint before the design is committed. It comes after the detailed 2D architectural drawing and before the structural drawing, so investors and tenants can see and sign off on the building before structural, MEP, approval and construction steps begin. AWH renders using AutoCAD 3D, REVIT, Etabs, BIM, TEKLA and STAAD PRO.

E-commerce fulfilment centres are designed for order processing; traditional B2B warehouses are designed for storage.

An e-commerce facility handles picking, packing, labelling and shipping of individual customer orders, with a high SKU count, fast picking systems and technology-driven operations, and it sits closer to consumer clusters. That drives design toward dock density, mezzanine picking levels and fast-throughput racking — mezzanine storage systems and pallet-flow racking (used by operators such as Flipkart) and ASRS with robots, cranes and software (Amazon). Inside cities it pushes the building vertical: multi-level formats with ramp access or cargo elevators, basement parking, and dark-store or micro-fulfilment layouts to hit same-day and two-hour delivery windows.

Traditional B2B warehousing holds goods for a long time — six months to a year — so it is designed as a large, horizontal, single-floor box on the city periphery, maximising cubic storage with block stacking or selective pallet racking, with fewer docks and fewer, larger vehicle movements.

The trade-off is throughput versus density: e-commerce buys dock ratio, clear height for mezzanines and automation-grade FM2 flooring; B2B buys the cheapest efficient pallet position.

Master planning allots areas across the parcel — the built shed plus internal access roads, parking spaces, aprons and turning areas, green spaces and utilities. Built-up area is governed by FSI, normally 0.5 to 0.75 in industrial buildings, and by ground coverage, which is maximised when the plot is rectangular. Open yard is driven by operations: aprons, turning areas and loading bays sized to trailers, parking provided as per government stipulations, and setbacks adequate for fire vehicular movement. Green land is set by OSR, which must be planned effectively — landscaped areas and open areas add to the overall ambience as well as satisfying the reservation. The split is derived from these drivers plot by plot, against the zoning and sanction the authority grants.

Design controls the two loads an industrial occupier pays for year after year: lighting and heat. A perfect insulation layer of suitable R-value applied to the ceiling and the exterior and interior walls — XLPE 9 mm foam on the roof — keeps the air inside cooler and stops a metal shed from behaving like an oven. Translucent lighting panels and skylights deliver enough daylight to ensure minimal use of electricity for lighting, against a 150 lux design target. Ridge and turbo ventilators drive the external air exchange that is mandatory in tropical climates, and greater ceiling height gives better temperature management. Provision for rooftop solar on the standing-seam roof means roofs can be fully utilised to be power surplus, reducing costs substantially.

A hybrid building combines different types of industrial uses or structural formats within the same development — manufacturing, warehousing, office and last-mile distribution in one structure. It carries higher floor load capacity, a combination of dock and grade-level loading, integrated office or mezzanine floors, flexible internal layouts, and full utility infrastructure. Designing for both uses cuts vacancy risk.

Construction risk is minimised by outsourcing execution to a project management team and locking the sequence before work starts.

A project-management team checks quality, catches overlapping processes and authorises payment only against deliverables met. Its scope covers manpower verification (skill and quantity), material verification (quantity and quality), quantity surveying, quality checking and payment advisory on work progress. Pay on actual quantities, run regular quality-control checks, and finalise vendors only after checking past performance and financial stability.

Share the structural drawing with the PEB contractor early so pillars and footings are marked correctly — postponing this is a fundamental mistake most owners and architects make. Get the right architect, approval agency, advocate, specification, client, contractor and consultant in place, plus proof of funds, so the project is not delayed and corners are not cut.

The most underestimated risk is HT power: a TANGEDCO high-tension connection takes 3–4 months at best, 4–6 months normally, and 6–12 months where a new line or substation is needed, and it carries heavy consumer-end infrastructure — transformer yard, HT/RMU/VCB panels, earthing. Plan HT power early, not at the end of the build.

Work splits into pre-design groundwork, design, and post-design execution through to leasing.

Pre-design is costed physical groundwork:

  • Site cleaning — JCB at Rs 1,100 per hour.
  • Government surveyor to mark boundaries — Rs 35,000–40,000 minimum, plus Rs 1,500 per stone (labour, painting, fixing).
  • Computer surveyor for laser survey and FMB super-imposing — Rs 15,000, up to 5 acres.
  • Soil test — Rs 20,000 per pit per 10,000 sqft; a 10,000–25,000 sqft plot needs 4 pits.

Design runs: master planning; the single/double-line test fit to setbacks, parking, open space, fire and tenant requirements; Grade A specifications and where each area and amenity sits; the 2D drawing; contours against road and flood levels; the 3D rendering; the structural drawing shared early with PEB for pillars and footings; structural and MEP design; approval drawings for sanction with the Provisional Fire NoC, power, CTE and EC.

Post-design is construction and completion: excavation and foundation, PEB erection, civil work, compound wall, flooring, mezzanine, roads and loading-area concreting, transformer, landscaping — then Consent to Operate, Fire NoC, OC/CC and local NoCs, environment, electrical, pollution, fire, safety and water compliances, occupation, and annual renewals. Leasing and property management close the cycle.

A master plan is the overall layout of the entire land parcel, allotting areas for the complete facility’s requirements. It fixes common areas and infrastructure: entry/exit with security, internal roads and lighting, parking, green spaces, water sources, harvesting and disposal, power, fire-fighting and safety, driver rest areas and toilets. The first box — a single or double-line shed — is designed within it, to setbacks, parking, open space and the tenant’s fire, statutory and operational requirements.

The workflow runs six stages:

  • Site analysis — right land, combined FMB, contour/soil/water tests, rectangular shape, minimal filling, title and zoning checks.
  • Architectural design — market analysis and spec to tenant requirement, test fit and master plan, technical and approval drawings.
  • Plan approval — DTCP/CMDA/Corporation/local body sanction; PCB CTE before work, CTO after completion; coordination with Health, Fire, BDO, Industries & Factories.
  • Construction and vendor management — BOQ from drawings, tender Civil/PEB/MEP, value engineer, finalise vendors on performance and financial stability, sign the execution agreement, quality and quantity checks.
  • Leasing — market the site, mandate to realtors, tenant background study, negotiate, sign, register.
  • Tenant satisfaction / property management — good maintenance keeps tenants long term.

Environment Clearance (EC) is the environmental and pollution approval an industrial or warehousing project must secure before it can be sanctioned and operated. It sits among the mandatory permits for setting up a warehouse — land use (CLU), building plan sanction, Consent to Establish, Environment Clearance, labour department licence and electrical connection licence — with Fire NOC, Consent to Operate and the occupancy certificate following construction. In the design-to-approvals sequence, EC is obtained together with the pollution consents, CTE (Consent to Establish from the Pollution Control Board) and EC, before plan sanction is granted, and it appears on the standard document checklist used to transact or rent a warehouse.

The operative rules are the Pollution Control Board consent procedure that runs with it — TNPCB in Tamil Nadu: get the CTE before commencement of work and the CTO after completion. It is a 60–90 day process that continues until the project is completed, coordinated across Health, Fire, BDO and Industries & Factories, with department coordination running 90–120 days. Projects are classified under the PCB colour categories — green, orange and red — based on polluting norms, with red-category units and hazardous or explosive goods (PESO colour zoning) drawing the strictest scrutiny and additional pollution NOCs.

These are the statutory design parameters every industrial shed drawing is built around, each fixed for the specific plot and zone by the sanctioning authority (DTCP/CMDA).

  • A. Building Height — designed to the operation, within what the authority permits. The Grade A benchmark is a clear height of 10 m plus, ideally 12 m; a ceiling centre height of 40–50 ft above plinth level; a side height of minimum 33 ft, ideally 40 ft. Height is driven by racking and vertical stacking, temperature control and EOT crane clearance.

  • B. Set-back Requirements — the open margin around the building, wide enough for a fire tender to circulate the shed; setbacks also carry external parking, aprons and services.

  • C. Parking Requirements — as per government stipulations: space for employees and commercial vehicles, plus large trailers; parking can also go in basements.

  • D. Open Space Reservation (OSR) — the green and open land reserved on the plot, planned at test-fit stage; landscaped areas add to the overall ambience.

With FSI (0.5–0.75 for industrial buildings) and ground coverage, these fix how much building a plot will yield — what the test fit computes.