Commercial Property News

A new record has been set for speed construction after a 13,000sqft Tesco store was delivered and installed in just 18 hours.Tesco's new temporary store at Northside, Workington, opened on Monday to the relief of customers living north of the River Derwent.

The interim supermarket in the flood-hit town of Workington in Cumbria was built from scratch and delivered by Johnson Construction and an off-site specialist and Portakabin subsidiary called Yorkon.

Yorkon craned 26 14m long modules into position in an accelerated programme of one unit every 30 minutes. This involved two teams of 10 Yorkon site staff working in shifts through the night.

The contractors worked though the night and completed the installation by 6am in time for the fit-out process to begin. It is believed to have cost more than £5 million to build and fit out in just one week.

Geoff Terry, senior project manager for Johnson Group, working with Tesco, said the 13,000 square foot store was the largest ever built in that time.

“It has taken us only seven days working 24 hours a day,” he said.

Last-minute preparations were still talking place on Monday minutes before customers arrived.

The shop is three times the size of the average Tesco Express store.

It has created 24 temporary jobs and 57 staff, who normally work at the store in Workington town centre but live north of the river, have relocated.

Daniel Frith, Tesco development manager, said: “This is the first time we have ever built a store in such a short time. At this time of year our customers are busy enough without a three-hour journey just to get to the supermarket. Many of our own staff have been badly affected by flooding so the temporary store will help them too.”

Tesco corporate affairs manager Doug Wilson said that if an Allerdale Council planning committee ruled against a retrospective planning application when it meets in January, then the shop would be removed at that time.

The supermarket company almost pulled out of the Northside plan last week when Allerdale appeared reluctant to give guarantees about planning approval.

The matter was resolved when Allerdale made it clear it would not take any action against the supermarket until the application was heard.