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Dive Brief:
- DPR Construction has said goodbye to its former headquarters in Redwood City, California, and moved about 30 miles south to a new flagship campus in Santa Clara which brings together its administrative, craft and manufacturing teams under one roof.
- The 113,702-square-foot facility includes both office space and the company’s new prefab assembly facility, which houses self-executing equipment for drywall, finish carpentry, architectural concrete, roofing and building envelopes, and specialty systems.
- DPR said the space, located in the heart of Silicon Valley, creates an environment where building components can be pre-assembled in a controlled environment using virtual design and construction tools while improving safety, quality and productivity to reduce scheduling risk and job site congestion.
Diving knowledge:
The transfer and consolidation aims to break down the barriers between the craftsmen and the reception workers by combining the three business parts in one location. Inside DPR’s new headquarters, 68,160 square feet is dedicated to open office space, while 45,542 square feet is slated for prefab. All DPR employees will have equal access to work spaces and amenities.
“I think traditionally in construction, even today, there’s this invisible wall or firewall, and it’s like you’re in the office or working with your hands,” Bay Area Business Co-Leader Kevin Chen told Construction Dive. “It just doesn’t feel right [as] collaborative as can be.”
The prefab lab is another step for the contractor as he continues to invest in the construction method. The lab is designed to ensure there are no weather-related production disruptions, which the company claims will provide reliable and repeatable construction results. Meanwhile, the office location seeks to provide consistent commutes for craft workers, a critical issue in the traffic-congested Bay Area.
And it’s not DPR’s first foray into prefab. In 2021, the contractor began building a prefabrication research facility in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.
The company previously highlighted the importance of prefabrication in data center constructions. In Texas, the company has fabricated electrical rooms, central utility plants, and significant mechanical and electrical pipe racks to reduce on-site construction.
Chen said DPR had been thinking about prefab long before the data center boom. The use of these prefabricated components helped reduce congestion in the field and resulted in a more predictable and higher quality product.
“We were already building data centers for many, many years,” Chen said. “But as they got bigger and faster, there was no better way to serve our technology-advanced customers than with our prefab capabilities.”
