Modular Office for Major Electric Company

During the initial site survey, we quickly realized that many of the existing pallet racks in the warehouse were being poorly utilized. Their existing structure also limited their storage capacity, but there was room for upward expansion that wouldn’t increase the overall footprint of the system and that would, in fact, decrease its footprint through proper utilization.

With these observations in mind, we began tackling this issue by adding a few beam levels of height to the existing rack system, increasing the storage capacity of each pallet rack. We reallocated stored materials among the racks and were able to free up a few bays of racks as a result of our first small change. Once we removed the unnecessary racks, we saw that we could bring the modular office our customer needed into the freed-up space.

We had also noted that a few existing bays of rack were solely dedicated to the storage of copper tubing, a material that needs to be stored apart from other materials. This observation led us to consider alternative storage locations for the copper tubing. When examining the structure of the modular office, we determined that we could add a load-bearing roof onto it that would provide enough structure and support to allow for the storage of the copper tubing on top of the roof, freeing up even more space within the pre-existing rack system. This change, once implemented, also allowed us to create a further degree of separation between the copper tubing and the other stored materials in the warehouse.

During our implementation of these changes, we luckily did not come across any additional obstacles or hurdles. Because of backup due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the lead time on materials was four to six weeks, and the materials ended up being delivered six weeks out. At that point, our crew completed the job with efficiency, instating the changes and installing the modular office in just two days.

Our work freed up space in the warehouse’s existing pallet rack system, allowing it to be better utilized moving forward. We also created a new storage location for copper tubing, which now sits out of harm’s way atop the modular office’s load-bearing roof. And lastly, the changes we implemented allowed us to bring in the office space our customers wanted in the warehouse, within their existing constraints.