Jobsite
Leasing Company Announces
‘The Green Fleet’
The nation’s first fleet
of High Performance Mobile
Offices™
Rochester,
Indiana – March 25, 2009
Jobsite
Leasing Company has brought sustainable building practices
to its lease fleet of job site field offices. Working with
manufacturer Jobsite Trailer Corporation and modular
designer Miletus Group, Inc.
When
utility bills started taking larger and larger bites out of
construction project costs, Jobsite Leasing Company saw a
significant uptick in interest in reducing energy costs and
green building in its fleet of mobile offices. Taking on the
challenge, JLC decided to find ways to improve the energy
efficiency of its mobile field office lease fleet. Working
closely with designers at Miletus Group, Inc and the
production team at their sister company Jobsite Trailer
Corporation, JLC has researched and begun implementing
several high performance building measures in both new
construction and in renovation of its existing fleet of
mobile offices.
These
new sustainable high performance measures are designed to
provide JLC customers with substantially reduced energy
costs during their field operations and to bring JLC much
closer to their corporate goal of being a leader in
responsible and sustainable building practices within the
mobile and modular building industry.
James
B. Guthrie, AIA, architect and spokesperson for the
Jobsite/Miletus team, noted: “The green building movement
has seen tremendous progress in the general building
industry in recent years while the mobile office sector has
lagged. Our team has spent a great deal of time analyzing
the best practices being used in the building industry and
finding ways to apply them to the mobile office industry.
Jobsite Leasing Company’s commitment to actually
implementing these sustainability practices across its
entire fleet of field offices is a first in the industry.”
The general
office construction and layout of the high performance units
will appear completely familiar to mobile offices users, but
customers who lease JLC’s High Performance Mobile Office can
expect significantly lower utility bills and far greater
comfort in the hot summer and cold winter months.
Guthrie
comments on Jobsite Leasing Company’s commitment to
practical and sustainable design: “When Jobsite Leasing
started this investigation they initially anticipated that
the costs of building high performance mobile offices would
be prohibitive and the results would be limited to a couple
of expensive demonstration units. Once we were able to show
them that the initial costs of a strategic implementation
were easily offset by their energy savings they were all in.”
Like any
industry steeped in tradition, convincing a company that has
been around since the 1970’s to change its ways was not an
easy task. The Miletus Group started by running a series of
DOE and USGBC/LEED® approved building performance computer
models. The models provided a baseline analysis of the
existing fleet against a variety of alternative design
approaches. With these models in hand, JLC agreed to proceed
with further development. The Miletus Group then worked with
the production team at Jobsite Trailer Corp’s manufacturing
plant to figure out what alternatives could be incorporated
into both new production and fleet retrofits.
Most of
these new sustainability measures will remain unseen to the
casual eye, including significant efforts being made back at
the factory. Jobsite Trailer Corporation, in addition to
building and renovating JLC’s fleet, has made their own
commitments to sustainable manufacturing and building
practices. Through both design strategies and in plant
methodologies, JTC has been able to achieve dramatic
reduction in construction material waste and greater than
95% recycling of what little waste is created in the plant.
They have also made dramatic shifts in material selection so
that vendor products must have the highest amount of
recycled content available in the market. On the back end,
life cycle performance has also been accounted for. In a
total commitment to recycling and reuse, each HPMO unit is
completely recyclable at life’s end.
As James
Guthrie comments, “The computer models were invaluable in
assessing avenues of approach and creating a general
strategy for this building type. While those models were an
essential start, the real successes for implementation came
when we brought the models to the guys who would actually
build these units in the factory. That effort produced new
refinements in materials and production. We now have a very
efficient, cost effective and sustainable practices approach
to building the HPMO. These mobile offices are actually very
tight high performance buildings. We know we will achieve at
least a 50% reduction in energy use and look forward to
having actual multi-season field data to prove even better
results.”
Several of
JLC’s customers have already expressed excitement at being
able to lease these new units and have agreed to continue to
monitor actual performance in the field. Guthrie added that
they will wait until the field numbers are in, but that they
won’t be at all surprised to see energy use down to 1/3 of
the non-HPMO units. |
