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Grimsby Company Wins International Award

June 6, 2005 - NRB Inc. was recently awarded a First Place Award of Distinction from the Modular Building Institute (MBI) for a four-storey, 12,420 sq ft school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

MBI is the International Trade Organization for the Commercial Modular Building Industry. Its Awards of Distinction program recognizes the world's best permanent and temporary modular building projects completed annually. In the 2004 competition, member companies submitted 111 modular buildings for consideration. NRB's Four Storey Charter School won first place in the Education over 10,000 sq ft. category.

To manage growing enrolment, the client wanted to add a major extension to an existing school, yet they faced several building challenges. The site was located in the middle of a downtown city and they were landlocked due to a limited available footprint on which to expand, constricting streets bordering the property, and stringent municipal planning. In addition, due to school-year considerations, an expedited timeframe was required.

"When you can't build out, you have to build up and modular construction provided the answers the school was looking for in the form of a four-storey building," says Bob McNeil, President of NRB Inc. "Since we built the structure at our facility, neighbourhood noise disruption was eliminated for most of the process. It also meant that on-site safety and security issues were largely removed while the school was still in session."

The steel and concrete structure contains classrooms, restrooms, common rooms and meeting rooms and features an attractive exterior façade of glass, spandrel and architectural aluminium panels. The interior features custom millwork and other unique design details. Plumbing, electrical and mechanical systems were pre-installed at the factory and tested prior to shipping.

Plant construction was completed in 16 weeks with concurrent site development. The building modules were set in place by crane in 14 days. From final engineering to opening the building for occupancy, the project was completed in significantly less time with far less disruption that conventional construction.