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What lies beneath the Westfield Carousel

National Precast Member MJB Industries is providing vital precast elements for the stormwater drainage system at Westfield Carousel in Cannington, Perth, as it undergoes a major upgrade.

National Precast Member MJB Industries is providing vital precast elements for the stormwater drainage system at Westfield Carousel in Cannington, Perth, as it undergoes a major upgrade.The Westfield Carousel in Cannington, Western Australia, will embark on a new era of shopping in 2018, following its $350 million redevelopment. The project will see the shopping centre expand from its current size of 82,000 square metres to approximately 110,000 square metres, making it the largest in the state.

From the glitz of the designer brands to an intricate stormwater management system, the Westfield Carousel will feature the best of Australia’s retail and construction markets – even if not all is directly in the limelight. What lies beneath the glamour of the centre’s walls is a precast concrete stormwater management system of gigantic proportions – one that captures the runoff collected from roofs, roads and footpaths.

Capabilities essential in awarding precast contract

As an integral part of the building’s stormwater management system, the project brief demanded that five notably large precast concrete siphonic discharge pits with matching covers be manufactured for the project. Acting as break tanks between the siphonic system and the civil gravity drainage system, the siphonic pits will pick up all the car deck and roof drainage.

Given the size of the pits, Sanwell Plumbing & Civil needed to award the project’s precast package to a precast manufacturer that possessed the required expertise and suitable manufacturing capabilities. National Precast member and Australian-based company MJB Industries was awarded the contract.

Precast saves five weeks’ construction time

Precast concrete pits provide many advantages compared with their in-situ counterparts, with the main benefit for the Westfield Carousel project being the speed of manufacture and installation.

Despite the geographical distance between MJB’S factory and the worksite, using precast significantly reduced on-site construction times. The total amount of time saved for the client was approximately five weeks – one week per tank.

Impressed with the precaster’s performance, Sanwell Plumbing & Civil noted: “MJB delivered on time on budget and quality was second to none.”

Custom-made to giant proportions 

The Westfield Carousel is set to reclaim its crown as Western Australia’s biggest shopping complex and along with that goes the need for a stormwater solution of grand proportions. Its custom-made pits in unusually large sizes marks them as somewhat unique. Needing to be large enough to contain the water that pours into them for long enough to simultaneously allow them to drain through the pipes, at a rate that keeps up with the flow of water, meant their sizes ranged from two metres up to almost five metres in width and as high as two metres.

Stormwater solutions for every application

On offer from the Western Australian precaster are two types of stormwater pits – modular and custom. While modular pits are available in a range of sizes with knockouts on all four sides for easy installation of pipes, custom pits come in a range of footprints to suit the various requirements of different projects and authorities.


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