Kroger Ocado Fulfillment Center — FC 04

As one of the first of its kind in the country, the Kroger Ocado Fulfillment Center (FC) provides direct-to-consumer grocery service using a heavily automated facility featuring hundreds of robots. Ryan’s third design-build project for the grocery leaders, the Forest Park FC is nearly identical to the first two in Monroe, OH, and Groveland, FL. Kroger plans to build 20 facilities across the country, changing the way Americans shop for groceries.

The 419,317-SF facility—located nine miles from Atlanta, GA—features four distinct levels and uses a combination of robots and humans to fulfill around 1,000 grocery orders daily for same-day, next-day or scheduled delivery. The Forest Park FC is adjacent to a nearly 1 million-SF Kroger Distribution Center, sharing parking and several utilities— including a power source that had to be meticulously rerouted during construction. The Kroger buildings are part of a larger industrial park created Forest Park on the closed Fort Gillem Army Base. Building on a former base posed its own challenges, from requiring training for unexploded ordnances to watching for remains of foundations, roads and supplies.

Four months of record rainfall at the project’s inception threatened to significantly delay the build. By stabilizing the soil with cement dust and keeping open communication with subcontractors, the project pushed forward. Weekly collaboration meetings with FC project teams at Monroe and Groveland helped all three buildings adapt to fast-paced changes and meet all of Kroger and Ocado’s requirements.

Ryan was the project anchor, fostering seamless integration between Kroger (owner), Ocado (automation consultant) and our design-build team. Partnering with Ocado as the automation lead enabled Kroger to receive a custom solution for their vision of continuing as leaders in the grocery delivery market. Using our past automation experience and insight, we increased efficiency, reduced costs and streamlined the delivery timeline from 24 to 14 months. Both companies relied on Ryan to navigate the intricate details of everything from fire suppression systems and building code expectations to material flow and multiple temperatures, all while educating teams on the critical technical aspects to successfully deliver the first automated fulfillment center in partnership between Kroger and Ocado.

Ryan led both Kroger and Ocado through the integration of extremely complex processes by leveraging state-of-the-art visualization technology and best-in-class collaboration. The team predicted challenges and proactively provided design solutions thanks to their deep knowledge of both the food and automation spaces. Throughout the design process, the team integrated digital models to help review all challenges in 3-D, which was instrumental in communicating clearly with subcontractors. To bridge gaps in understanding, Ryan’s architecture team combined their familiarity with Kroger standards with their automated facility experience to offer innovative, efficient recommendations and found creative solutions when the numbers did not align. Throughout the building process, Ocado adjusted its automation system, and our team stayed in lockstep with them thanks to the robust meeting and modeling protocols established early in the process.