Building a better field office
It’s dubbed the “Field Office of the Future.” And earlier this year, the innovative, comfortable triple-wide earned DAVIS Construction an Honorable Mention at the Modular Building Institute’s World of Modular 2025 awards.
Several years ago, plans to upgrade DAVIS’s headquarters convinced the company that it was also time to build a better construction trailer.
“Half of our employees are out in the field and, while we were creating better workspaces, we didn’t want to forget about them,” said Chris Scanlon, Chief Innovation Officer.
DAVIS explored design possibilities through an innovation challenge at the company’s annual conference, a design competition among summer interns and, finally, the construction of a scale prototype.
In addition to creating more comfortable, impressive and efficient workspaces, DAVIS also wanted “a fully modular, stackable, super flexible trailer,” Scanlon said. “So, if you were working in a downtown environment, you could stack the modules three high. But if you were on a site with more space, you could put the modules next to each other on the ground.”
While the prototype showed those goals were attainable, the financial estimates concluded they were not feasible. One triple-wide trailer would cost between $1.5 million and $1.7 million — nearly six times the price of a standard construction trailer.
By partnering with Maryland-based Modular Genius, DAVIS was able to refine the design, streamline the fabrication process, attain most of its goals (the revised trailer is not stackable) and cut the cost by nearly two-thirds.
Last year, DAVIS deployed its Field Office of the Future to its first site – the Parcel H high-rise, multi-family development in North Bethesda.
The benefits for staff members and visiting representatives of project partners are extensive, Scalon said.
To create a “thermally comfortable environment, we started with a high-performance envelop, two-by-six walls, well-insulated double-pane windows, high efficiency heat pumps and an energy recovery ventilator” that enables improved air circulation, he said.
“The job site is a very noisy place and it can be tough to concentrate and get your work done, so we put in a nice acoustical tile ceiling, carpet on the floors and acoustical wall panels that double as tech panels,” he said. “The improved thermal envelop also blocks a lot of noise.”
Workstations copy workstations at DAVIS’s headquarters – sit-to-stand desks with dual 27-inch monitors and docking stations.
The field office has two conference rooms with full AV systems and floor-to-ceiling white boards. One conference room doubles as a wellness room to provide a comfortable space for nursing mothers and any other wellness needs.
The design includes large windows, an ADA-accessible entrance ramp and a modular canopy “so that on days when it’s not 104 degrees, like today, you can sit outside and barbeque,” Scanlon said.
The field office has received glowing reviews from workers who have used it and, due to shifts in the economy, now costs about the same as renting a conventional trailer. DAVIS is exploring options for putting Field Offices of the Future on more of its sites.