HSV (Holden Special Vehicles)

HSV (Holden Special Vehicles) is a very well known brand in the Australian Automotive Industry. This highly successful privately owned business is located in the heart of Melbourne’s manufacturing hub south-east of the city. After severe hail storms in recent years, HSV approached Oasis to design and construct a hail protection structure to cover an area in excess of half a hectare.

Oasis engineers and specialist consultants devised a pitched roof structure that spanned the site to eliminate central columns. The roof fabric is “Hailguard” supplied by Gale Pacific. It is held in place with a cable grid to create ridge and valleys down the longitudinal direction, with hogging and sagging cables in the transverse direction.

The structure has been designed to absorb energy from falling hailstones and deflect it to valleys for collection and ultimately discharge.

The major challenge faced by the designers was poor soil conditions. A mixture of screw pile foundations, bored piers and bridging piles were necessary to provide resistance in soil on a site with over a metre of fill overburden and a high water table.

The walls have been finished in a medium grade of fabric to provide aesthetic and visual screening.

The resultant clear-span structure provides HSV with an abundance of space to safely store vehicles prior to entering their manufacturing plant.