Why does one bollard tell you so little?
A catalogue lists a steel tube. Installation is the rest of the job, and on a trading store it is usually the larger part. Two stores on the same street can need different mounting, different traffic management and a different number of bollards because one has a kerb and the other has nose in bays against the glass.
Crash rated hostile vehicle work is a different product again, tested under IWA 14, PAS 68 or ASTM F2656, on a specified foundation. Nextage does not offer that. Mixing that work with ordinary shopfront impact protection is how a scope becomes fiction. Decide the risk first. The ram raid guide on this site is that decision. This page is what shapes the job once you have decided you are buying vehicle impact protection.
How does the mounting method change the job?
Cast in the ground. A hole is excavated, the bollard is set in concrete, the surface is made good. It is the slowest method and the one that most disturbs the pavement. It is also the most secure for a given bollard, because the footing is new.
Core drilled into an existing slab. A hole is drilled, the bollard is grouted in. It is faster on a sound, thick slab, and it is the method most retail shopfronts actually use. It is only as good as that slab.
Surface mounted on a base plate. Bolted down, no deep hole. Used where the slab is too thin, services sit where a core would go, or the landlord will not allow excavation. It is quicker. It is also easier to undo, which is a weakness if the point is to stop a car.
Removable, in a ground sleeve, with or without a lock. Needed across a roller door or a loading path that still has to take a truck. The sleeve, the lock and the extra labour are their own line in the scope.
What does the slab, and what sits under it, change?
Before anyone drills, the slab should be understood: thickness, condition, joints, and whether it is a pavement the centre owns. Services under shopfronts are common: electrical, communications, irrigation, trade waste. Hitting one stops the job and can close the store.
Scan first. Ground penetrating radar or an equivalent locate is an extra step, and a much smaller one than a cut cable. Where the scan rules out a core, the store switches to a base plate, and the specification has to allow that, or the scope is wrong.
Making good the surface afterwards is easy to forget when you look at the product alone. Colour matching a drive thru slab, reinstating tactile indicators, or replacing a saw cut that went through a joint all sit in the installed scope.
How many bollards, and how far apart?
Count comes from the risk: which bays point at the glass, the entry and the queue, and how wide that frontage is. One store with a single door is a handful. A drive thru shopfront can be a line of them.
Spacing has to do two jobs at once. Close enough that a car cannot pass between them. Open enough for a wheelchair, a pram and a loaded trolley. AS 1428.1:2021 sets a minimum unobstructed width of 1000 mm on a continuous accessible path of travel. That is an access constraint on the gap, not a bollard product rating. The path at that door is the certifier's call.
A layout copied from the last store will be wrong if this store has a different kerb, a different door or a different trolley flow.
What else shapes the job?
- Material and finish: galvanised steel, a coloured cover, or stainless. Stainless and covers are more to supply and to replace
- Height and wall thickness. Taller and thicker steel is more product and a heavier lift
- After hours work, because most shopfronts cannot be excavated in trade
- Traffic management on a drive thru, a car park lane or a public footpath
- Centre, landlord or council approval, and any public land permit
- How far the crew and the steel have to travel, and whether several stores in a city can be done on the same swing
Flexible polyurethane bollards and fold down parking bollards sit in a different scope because they are a different job: they guide and warn, they do not do shopfront impact protection. Do not mix them into this scope.
How should a fleet be scoped?
Audit the higher risk stores first, as a step that does not commit anyone to the works. Freeze one specification: diameter, wall thickness, height, finish and the two mounting details you will actually use. Then a scope per store, so finance can stage the worst frontages this year.
That is how Nextage runs storefront protection: audit, one frozen spec, a scope per site, install, photo close out. A catalogue gives you a bollard. A program needs a scope for each store.
Sources, links checked 10 November 2026: AS 1428.1:2021, Design for access and mobility (Standards Australia); ASTM F2656, crash testing of vehicle security barriers (ASTM)
