Month: July 2020

Hygienic Retail Doors

Posted on by Dortek

Hygienic retail doors or hygienic crash doors are used in many retail applications where there is a need for hygienic and robust doors.

Hygienic retail doors have a number of advantages including cleanliness, strength, high operating efficiency, heat conservation, infection prevention and noise pollution. They are specifically designed to offer reliable, safe and durable operation to meet the demands of retail and industrial environments.

Let’s explore each of the benefits these types of doors offer in more detail.

They support hygiene and infection control

Retail, food, manufacturing and commercial kitchen environments all place hygiene as a key priority. Premises should permit good hygiene practices, be easy to clean and disinfect and should offer protection against external sources of contamination, such as pests and bacteria.

The benefit of flip flap doors is that they’re constructed with a high-density glass fibre reinforced polyester core that prevents water absorption and bacteria. The smooth, hygienic GRP surface is easy to keep clean. They are ideal for wash down areas due to the fact that they will not swell, rot, rust or warp.

These doors are also valuable for pest control as they prevent access from unwanted visitors entering the premises, particularly where there is food.

They can be provided with third party tested fire ratings

Our fire rated retail doors are designed and constructed to industry leading standards; all our doors comply with the latest fire safety standards. We can provide up to four hours fire rating and doors can be linked to a fire alarm management system.

They withstand high traffic and heavy impacts

The most essential feature of a hygienic retail door is that they are built to withstand heavy impacts. High traffic areas such as retail environments will have cages, forklifts and other equipment frequently passing through so they need to be strong and able to endure high impacts.

Dortek hygienic retail doors are constructed from GRP, which is plastic reinforced by fine fibres made of glass. GRP is known for its high mechanical strength and durability.

Hygienic retail crash doors are designed for heavy duty areas and usually come equipped with door protection which can include polypropylene bumpers. These help to guard against aggressive traffic and prevent damage to the door face.

They help improve operational efficiency and productivity

Large retail stores experience high volumes of traffic every day. Suppliers and employees move around these stores frequently which is why a typical door would be unsuitable to this environment. A hygienic retail door is specially designed to increase productivity and to enable smooth and easy access. Doors can also come prepared with kick and push plates as well as hold open devices.

GRP is a naturally insulating material which helps maintain temperature controls. Features like these are very beneficial, especially for areas that are humid or for food or household items that are sensitive to temperature. Hygienic retail doors are an economical way to reduce both heat loss and noise pollution in working environments

Hygienic retail doors constructed from GRP are also extremely lightweight and impact resistant with long lasting built-in colour. The outer skin of the door has a gel coat finish which is chemically bonded to the glass fibre. This ensures that the door will never require repainting or refinishing. All these factors give the doors low life cycle costs and means they are often proven to outlive their usage.

Automation units can also be added to the doors to eliminate the need to touch the door surface. This reduces cross contamination by removing the need to touch the door and it also reduces impact damage and increases longevity.

The main benefits of Dortek hygienic retail doors are:

  • Hygienic – smooth, easy to clean, non-porous gelcoat finish which does not harbour bacteria and is resistant to water and cleaning chemicals.
  • Robust design – a durable, hardwearing construction which is built to last in high traffic applications.
  • Easy to operate crash doors – lightweight, self-closing and with a 180-degree swing hinge system which is user friendly.
  • Automations – single action doors are available with automations to help reduce cross contamination and impact damage. A range of actuators including push buttons, infra-red radars or pull cords are available.
  • Fire certified – up to 4 hours fire rating to meet fire safety regulations.
  • Cost effective – helps reduce building energy costs by keeping temperature-controlled zones isolated.
  • Efficient – helps improve traffic flow and enable people, forklifts and trolleys to move around buildings quickly.
  • Reduces contamination/noise – separates areas to help reduce contamination, dust, fumes and noise pollution.
  • Pest control – helps prevent access for pests or birds.

Collage of retail doors.

Dortek hygienic retail doors are used across major retail chains in the UK, Asia and Europe. Here are some recently completed retail projects where hygienic retail doors are being used:

  • Aldi
  • Lidl
  • Sainsburys
  • Morrisons
  • Waitrose
  • Farmfoods
  • B&M
  • Harrods
  • Ikea
  • Dunelm
  • Wilkos
  • The Range

Have a look at our website or contact our retail team at info@dortek.com for more information.

Utilising Digital Opportunities in Construction: the Benefits of BIM

Posted on by Dortek

The requirements for working from home (where possible) and of social distancing when at work (and other times) are now part of our accepted routine. We are becoming used to working remotely and collaboratively, and the use of technology is impacting our lives now, more than ever.

How can BIM be utilised to help ensure these needs are met?

Utilising digital opportunities in construction: the benefits of BIM.

One of the fundamental benefits of BIM is that it encourages working and design collaboration between various design consultants. This helps to streamline and coordinate communication and collaboration between teams, which is obviously needed in the present circumstances where experiences gained by one set of design consultants needs to be shared with other sets of design consultants – whether this is locally or internationally.

BIM facilitates coordination of the various design consultants’ designs, and this helps prevent conflict between those designs, speeding up the design process.

The design consultants collaborate through a central depository of models and drawings, that depository being called a Common Data Environment (CDE), which is normally ‘cloud’ based and can therefore be accessed from anywhere around the world. The use of a CDE therefore enables and encourages remote working from collaborative teams. BIM helps to create healthy buildings, by using computer driven fluid dynamics to assess indoor air quality, by performing analysis of discrete zones to assess the thermal comfort of individual occupants, by examining the feasibility and performance of different ventilation strategies, by managing moisture and condensation, by assessing reverberation and acoustic impacts, and by measuring and designing ambient lighting. Further, BIM provides the ability to use information in the 3D model to directly create fabrication drawings, thus avoiding what can often be a problematic and time-consuming step in the construction process. This creates the opportunity for more prefabrication of components off-site, which, given the social distancing restrictions of working on site, will speed up the entire process of creating both permanent and temporary buildings that are presently so necessary to satisfy the increasing demand during the current pandemic.

Dortek BIM objects.

Dortek has over 21 different product categories available for download. All our objects are available in user friendly Revit file format and are Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) and COBie compatible. Download Dortek’s BIM objects from the NBS National BIM Library or BIMstore.

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