Custom Modular Building

How Universities Can Use Modular School Buildings

Aug 9, 2023

Education is a valued part of our societal fabric. As a result, Canada is reevaluating its higher education system. Several provinces have increased their budgets for educational spending and instituted tuition freezes for universities.

With Canada’s population increasing, new educational institutions are also opening. For example, the University of Niagara Falls, Canada is opening in downtown Niagara Falls and will begin accepting new students in 2024. It’ll provide the Niagara region with significant economic and employment benefits.

One of the ways universities, like the University of Niagara Falls, can be successful is by integrating modular school buildings into their campuses. In this blog, we’ll discuss the benefits of using modular classroom buildings and what products you can choose from in your build.

Why Would a University Use Modular?

One of the more obvious uses for a modular building on a university campus is for student housing. While they can certainly be used for that, there are several other uses for modular buildings.

For a university opening for the first time or expanding its campus, modular buildings can help shorten your construction time and allow for a quicker start date. You don’t need to worry about finding a building to fit your needs since you can custom-design our modular structures to create the exact educational facility you want.

Using modular school buildings is also a way to help you keep your construction costs down and help stay on budget. This will make administrators happy as well as donors. Another way modular buildings help with saving money is that they’re environmentally friendly, which helps keep the heating and cooling bills down.

If your university is already established and operational, modular buildings are still useful as a temporary solution. You can use them to add more teaching areas or help expand existing classrooms or labs. This allows you to customize the rooms to both students’ and professors’ needs, which can be a benefit for professors.

Using modular buildings as temporary spaces also allows you to continue educating students while your campus is under construction. It gives you the flexibility to keep teaching but students won’t be in an active construction site, which is safer for everyone involved.

You can also use modular buildings as storage areas. Different academic departments can have their own devoted storage areas along with maintenance and groundskeeping.

Washrooms/Lavatories

Washroom buildings, or lavatories, are delivered with male and female sides, and feature flushable toilets, urinals, sinks, and optional wheelchair accessibility. BOXX also has an option where you can add stairs, landings, or a ramp for easier access.

You also don’t need to worry if your site doesn’t have waste tanks. Our washrooms can be delivered with built-in or external water and waste tanks. Once installation is done, then they’re ready to use.

Storage Containers

As we mentioned earlier, storage is a valuable commodity. Made out of solid steel, our storage containers provide a secure area to keep equipment, supplies, or administrative work. All of our storage containers come with a lockbox, giving you the ability to use your own padlock for extra security.

We also can provide bracket-mounted shelving for the containers so you can keep everything organized inside. Our storage containers can also be rented or purchased either as a stand-alone unit or packaged together with another building.

Container Offices

If you need something that provides more flexibility than a storage container but still want the security of one, our container office might be the answer.

These are also made of solid steel, with lockboxes and bracket-mounted shelving, but they have steel screens over the windows. This allows them to be used as secure office spaces or meeting rooms in addition to regular storage. You can also add in an office furniture package so it’s ready to use as soon as it’s installed.

Mobile Offices

Whether it be for administrative personnel, professors, or maintenance staff, people need secure places to do their work. Our mobile office trailers are outfitted with a frame and wheels so you can move them to different locations around the campus or once you find the perfect space, securely park them.

You can use mobile offices not only for offices—they can also be used as conference rooms, employee break rooms, or even mobile classrooms.

Office Complexes

If you’re starting your university from the ground floor, you’ll want to get it operational as quickly as possible. Once you have a campus layout decided, you can use modular office complexes as temporary spaces during construction.

You can create departmental complexes with offices, labs, and classrooms. There can be complexes that are the Dean’s office or other administrative offices. You can also create technology centres and study areas for students.

Once an area is complete, the department can move into their new space and the modular building can be dismantled or if you discover you need the extra space, then it can stay until the demand lessens.

Our office complexes are built to code locally in Canada and range from 1,000 to 6,000 square feet, meaning you’ll have the space for your current students and staff but also have room for expansion.

SmartSpace

One of our newer products, SmartSpace is the next generation of temporary, portable workspace solutions. It has a unique building block design that makes it affordable and easy to use.

They can be stacked up to three units high so even if you have a small area horizontally, you can still build vertically to get your space. Like all of our other products, SmartSpace systems are ready to be used as soon as they’re installed.

The Benefits of Partnering with BOXX

When choosing a modular provider, you want one who will work with you through the whole process and find the right solution for your business.

An area that sets us apart is our construction process. We build our structures in a controlled environment then each section is assembled at a building site. This means that weather delays aren’t an issue so your build timeline won’t suffer.

Being environmentally friendly is important to us so we use sustainable building practices and materials whenever we can in our builds. This allows us to minimize waste throughout the build to create 40% less construction waste.

Another benefit of a BOXX modular building is you have options to create a building that is customized for your needs. You can choose from several floor plans and configurations. You can also add additional storage and select materials for your design, like flooring.

If you’re planning on expanding your modular building, you can also plan for that in the initial customization process. We don’t create a one-size fits all building; we want you to get exactly what you want.

And the customization doesn’t end with your building’s appearance. You also have options on purchasing versus leasing. If your project doesn’t need a long-term solution, leases are available. If you want a permanent structure, you can purchase a building that you can customize to fit your needs.

When you invest in a BOXX modular building, you get a product that can work for every stage of your campus’s development and make the startup process smoother.