‘The Green Fleet’

The nation’s first fleet of

High Performance Mobile Offices™

Rochester, Indiana – March 16, 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.