BSH IS A joint venture between Bosch and Siemens, two well known German multi-nationals who have set up a plant about 45Km out of Chennai at SIPCOT Industrial Estate, Plillaipakkam.

The site is 60 acres in area and slopes to the south, away from the road, towards a seasonal lake located about a kilometer away. In developing the site, care was taken to ensure that this flow remained unaffected – both upstream and downstream.

Due to process requirements the site had to be leveled. These levels were decided by carefully balancing the cutting and filling areas such that surplus earth was not generated in the process nor any additional earth brought in from outside ensuring that no environmental damage was generated off-site to satisfy our project needs. While being an environmentally sound solution, it also resulted in major savings. All the waste water generated in the plant is treated and re-used for flushing and gardening making the plant a zero discharge facility. These are some of the measures we employed to reduce the environmental footprint of the factory.

The main plant and Logistics building are steel structures with north light roofs. Though this is a conventional solution, it has special significance when it comes to the utilization of solar energy. The skylight that faces north provides excellent light free of glare during the day, while the roof which faces south at an angle of 12° is ideal for mounting photovoltaic panels making maximum use of the daylight hours for producing energy. The serrated roof form also accommodates the ventilation system for cooling the building at night. Computer simulations were carried out to verify the effectiveness of these solutions and refinements were made in some problem areas.
Both the main plant and logistics building are expandable to twice their original area.

Site planning is based on the principles of segregation of traffic and creation of security zones as explained earlier. The site is split broadly into two sections, namely, plant and non-plant areas. Each has an independent traffic system with only one link to be used during emergencies. There is a graded system of security zones starting with minimal restrictions for the incoming truck holding area to medium security for the administration and social areas and high security for the all plant buildings where entry is restricted only to authorized personnel. The process flow of the plant was integrated with these systems to provide a seamless activity pattern covering the whole site.