With summer comes construction’s longtime nemesis: rain. We recently started working with a company that has taken on the daunting task of building a power plant in a “greenfield” sort of situation – they had no existing structures in which they could store their equipment and materials. As the rain started falling, so did their bottom line. Equipment needed extra maintenance, materials were getting ruined, and there were many delays caused by the weather. They needed a shelter and they needed it fast, so they turned to Big Top. They saw that our structures don’t require a permanent foundation and that they could be manufactured quickly and erected easily. Within just a few weeks, they had a fully functional shelter and moved on to finish building the power plant on time and under budget.

In addition to rain, summer also brings warmer weather. We can all remember at least one time when we felt fatigued by high temperatures, or even completely gave up on being outside because it was just too hot and humid. But the fact of the matter is, heat does much more than just simply make us feel uncomfortable – it adds significant stress to our bodies, so high temperatures are hardly productive environments. Worse, they’re dangerous environments, and can result in heat trauma or even death. Ideally, any work that can be done in the shade should be done in the shade, in order to maximize employee efficiency and prevent time loss. Fortunately, Big Top’s structures not only provide shade, but they can also be easily modified to accommodate high temperatures, helping your employees feel more comfortable and more productive, thereby increasing your bottom line.

Businesses across the United States are required by law to provide safe working environments, and this includes protection from the heat. Big Top is proud to have gone one step further with our recent acceptance into OSHA SHARP (Safety and Health Achievement Recognition Program). This distinction recognizes our commitment to safety in the workplace, as well as providing our employees with exemplary illness and injury prevention programs. So, if you’d like to create a safe and comfortable environment for your employees, protect your equipment from the damages caused by inclement weather, and increase your bottom line, contact Big Top today. Many businesses don’t realize that our fabric structures can do the job of a permanent structure for a fraction of the cost.

Are You Ready for Winter?

By Jeff Merschman

Whether you’re ready or not, winter is upon us. Soon the temperatures will be dropping, and the snow will be accumulating. Neither of those is particularly helpful when you have an outdoor job to do. In fact, meteorologists predict an especially bitter-cold, snowy winter this year, so the time is now to plan ahead and prepare.
It’s no secret that the winter months can negatively impact productivity, and create more risk. For workers, the colder weather leaves them susceptible to frostbite and hypothermia. With more ice and snow, there’s a heightened chance for injury. Even your equipment and materials hate the snow. Cold weather reduces the lifespan of equipment, takes a toll on components, and renders equipment more difficult to utilize. Uncovered, materials can be buried in snow and ice – in some cases ruined. Working with concrete is very difficult in cold weather. Add in the higher fuel and diesel prices necessary to keep workers warm and heavy equipment running. Winter can be tough on a business.

All of these challenges illustrate why a sturdy, well-constructed fabric structure is a necessity in the winter months. Our fabric structures can be engineered to withstand impressive wind and snow loads per your requirements – basically anything Mother Nature can throw at you. They provide extremely comfortable working environments – and can be customized with options that include heaters, HVAC, insulation, electrical and lighting. This will keep workers safe and warm and productivity up, even with less hours of daylight.

And your equipment will thank you as well. Keeping expensive machinery out of the ice and snow will keep it running at optimum levels, insuring your productivity doesn’t dip with the temperatures. Big Top Fabric Structures are also easy to install, disassemble and extremely mobile. With mobility choices that include crane lifting packages or wheels and rail, the structures can moved to the current project or job site that need attention.

Winter is a wonderful time of year – except when you have a job to do. But Big Top Fabric Structures can help make those cold, short days extremely productive, and comfortable.

Keep your assets safe from direct sun heat and other extreme elements.

BY Jeff Merschman

Heat is a killer, and what might be getting burnt is your bottom line. With today’s weather extremes, it’s now more important than ever to protect the lifeblood of your company – your assets and personnel.

An air courier business in the Southwest, for example, faces not only astronomical equipment and fuel costs but the additional expense of fending off the broiling conditions. Workers are in danger of heat stroke or worse. Equipment is at stake. The cost of constructing hangars capable of protecting aircraft and employees properly can be prohibitively expensive and could scuttle a business before it has the chance to take off.

The military in that region is acutely aware of the threat posed by the brutal heat. In Yuma, Arizona, the Marines gauged the temperature in a Harrier Jump Jet’s cockpit at 168ºF without overhead protection. Marine pilots are up against enough as it is. Can you imagine getting into that seat? Not to mention fried avionics – a very expensive proposition indeed.

Imagine your own costs if you had to replace your aircraft or your inventory.

A solid line of defense is the only way to guard your assets, move forward and expand your business. And the protection and comfort of your employees is vital to your success.

Many people don’t realize that high-quality fabric structures offer supreme protection from the elements – and at a fraction of the cost of their brick-and-mortar counterparts. They can be assembled quickly and relocated easily. Fabric enclosures offer structural integrity and longevity without great expense.

The military, at the most vital level, clearly understands the value of protecting its equipment and shielding its soldiers, and that is why its branches have trusted Big Top Fabric Structures for decades. Using one of our sun shelters, the Marines at Yuma measured the Jump Jet’s internal temperature at 97º.

The Navy measured a surface temperature of 140º on the flight deck of the USS John F. Kennedy aircraft carrier. Underneath a Big Top structure, the carrier’s deck was a mere 87º.

The Air Force employs our shelters at its Edwards, Moody and Eglin Air Force bases, among many others. The USAF chose Big Top to cover the elite 33^rd Fighter Squadron’s F-18 and F-15s, adding a year to their paint cycle.

The military relies on Big Top to shield the most expensive equipment in the world.

Your assets are on the line, and we can provide an affordable, customizable way to protect them as well. Our fabric structures are used extensively in commercial aviation, the marine industry, heavy construction, energy, and manufacturing, to name a few. Using Big Top Structures, our clients are able to protect sensitive equipment and provide comfortable working environments for their employees.

Of course, heat is not the only threat your business might face. Our fabric structures are engineered to meet building codes, are reinforced with galvanized steel and can withstand Zone 4 earthquake specifications. They can withstand wind speeds of up to 120 miles per hour and snow accumulation of 40 pounds per square foot. A lightning protection kit can be installed on nearly every one of our enclosures.

Through the decades, Big Top has innovated and adapted to meet the needs of companies in all kinds of environments. Your assets are your livelihood, and your people pave the way to continued success. We provide affordable, customized ways to protect both. We’ve got you covered wherever you do business.

 

 

Click the image below to learn how fabric structures offer optimal working environments for a multitude of industries and applications.

 

Click here for a printable PDF version of the Ideal Working Environment infographic.

Terry White, owner and president of B.E.T.-ER Mix Concrete in Hudson, Florida talks about how fabric structures from Big Top Shelters have improved his business. Read More

Light. It’s Natural, It’s Free, and It Will Change Your Business.

By Jeff Merschman

The influence and impact a work environment can have on a business’ bottom line is significant. Consider central air and heat. The ability to control the climate within a building has lead to increased productivity, safer working conditions, improved worker moral, reduced overhead costs, and greater product integrity.

But controlling a work environment is a recurring expense. And as volatile temperatures continue to disrupt once predictable seasons, the need for innovative and affordable solutions will only increase.

One such solution has been beating down on us since the dawn of time: Natural light.
Seems obvious, right? It has been to residential designers and architects who have long harnessed natural light in homes and apartments. Think skylights and glass sliding doors and the California-driven approach to “bringing the outside in.” But it’s taken some time for industrial site designers and architects to look to natural light as a way to illuminate spaces and warm rooms. Today, that’s changing.

Natural Light Has a Measurable Effect on Productivity

A great example is the East Lansing, Michigan-based Peckham Inc.’s new 109,000-square-foot facility, recently featured in Area Development Online. According to the article, the facility made natural light a central focus, literally, by constructing a large light well in the middle of the building.

While benefits to overhead cost are expected (the construction was just finished this spring), Peckham discovered an almost unintended benefit: Natural light helped break down the barriers between white and blue-collar workers.

By providing natural light throughout the building in a central location, everyone had access to the “corner office,” so to speak. Natural light was available to everyone, not just C-suite employees. In addition to the cultural influence of natural light, it’s expected that Peckham’s natural light design will potentially contribute somewhere between 20 and 50 percent in energy savings.

Bringing Natural Light Inside

At Big Top, we’re seeing customers look at natural light as a potential business asset, too. B.E.T.-ER MIX Concrete in Hudson, FL produces concrete and aggregate. It’s hard work, and the environment in which they do this work can wreak havoc on their business. After all, it rains on average 100 days a year in Florida.

Our Big Top Fabric Structures were an obvious solution. They protected operations from the elements, and kept workers out of the direct sun. But our structures’ also helped them use natural light. Specifically, our translucent fabrics allowed natural light to permeate covered spaces, but also provided enough light for B.E.T.-ER MIX to conduct their daily operations. Using our structures, B.E.T.-ER MIX is now able to give their employees a dry, well-lighted place to work, while gaining substantial energy cost savings in the process. It’s win-win.

What’s interesting about both B.E.T.-ER MIX. and Peckham is that the solution to their work environment challenges wasn’t to impose control through producing artificial light and temperature, but to find a solution that harnessed what was already available to them.
So much of our world revolves around the ability to flick a switch, adjust a thermostat, or seal a window or door. But as business and industry continue to grow, evolve and face new challenges to their work environments, simply pressing a button will not be enough, Solutions will have to be smart, holistic, and, arguably, natural to the environments in which we work.

How Businesses Are Redefining Temporary.

By Jeff Merschman

Is flexibility and adaptability more important to a business’ future than size or even growth?

Can temporary solutions really replace permanent ones?

As we start to slowly emerge from the most recent recession, these are the kinds of questions businesses are starting to ask themselves. And the answers they’re finding are revealing just how much has changed since 2007.

Over the past few years, flexible, temporary business solutions have become regular practice, and appear to be more than just a predictable short-term response to an economic downturn. Just last year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that there were more workers employed as temps than at any time since the start of the 21^st Century. Similarly, the equipment business has shifted away from purchasing and towards renting. In 2014, the rental market for commercial equipment is expected to grow 12 percent, generating $36.6 billion total revenues.

Originally this movement towards temporary solutions was simply how business leaders dealt with a slowing economy. Stop-gap measures that enabled them to stay afloat. Or, as Sidney Sexson, senior vice president at Wells Fargo Equipment Finance, put it, it was “the uncertainty created by the economic downturn of the last few years and an unwillingness to commit” that pushed a lot of different industries to pursue solutions that gave them easy outs.

But today it’s different. Temporary solutions no longer reflect apprehension or caution on the part of business and industry. In fact, they now offer some very distinct advantages and capabilities.

The Advantages of Temporary

1. Cost Effective

Renting equipment or building a temporary, mobile structure, or even hiring seasonal employees enables businesses to avoid long-term capital investments. Maintenance is no longer an on-going expense, and as insurance options become available to more and more people, many companies can get out of the health business.

2. Availability

As customer demands and needs change faster and faster, businesses have to respond with equal speed. Purchasing can slow that down. Immediate availability of equipment, structures and people is critical to a businesses’ ability to keep pace with the world.

3. Risk Management

Any restaurant manager will tell you that their ability to get staff off the clock fast is indispensible to their ability to control costs and manage risk. Employing staff during slow non-revenue generating periods can kill a business. The same goes for capital investments in equipment or even mortgages on newly built spaces. Temporary solutions allow a business to eliminate wasted hours and reduce the risk of economic slowdowns.

4. Trial Periods

And when purchasing or owning makes the most sense for a business, temporary solutions give businesses the opportunity to try things on and see if they fit. A temporary structure can act as a trial period or proving ground for investing in a permanent structure. Contracting employees can bridge the gap between interviewing and investing in a new hire. Renting a forklift or another piece of heavy equipment can give a business the opportunity to measure its use against the cost of purchasing.

Ultimately, flexibility and adaptability are becoming the cost of doing business in a constantly changing world. As a result, new business models are emerging.

New Models Meet Demands for Temporary Solutions

Aviation

There may be no better, or more high profile, example of a new business model designed to meet temporary needs than the budding private jet rental industry. Owning a private jet is expensive. It demands significant initial investments, ongoing maintenance, constant licensing, mandatory inspections and long-term storage. And that’s just the jet itself. Private ownership also requires hiring crew to operate your plane, which leads to salaries, training, medical evaluations and more licensing costs. Oh, and all the while, your jet is depreciating.

It’s no wonder then that a number of different companies have emerged in the past five to ten years to provide access to private jets without the cost and hassle of owning. NetJets, XOJET and BlueStar are just a few of the more established private jet charter companies. But what’s even more interesting is how this “temporary” industry is evolving. Just recently, PrivateFly, an online booking service not unlike Expedia, started giving customers the ability to search for private charter options and compare prices.

Commercial Space

Established businesses are starting to question the capital investments required to create permanent brick-and-mortar structures. The time, effort, planning and costs associated with constructing new buildings can prevent a business from remaining flexible and adaptable. This is making temporary structures, not just shared ones, an increasingly attractive option.

A growing number of industries are embracing temporary structures, from marine and construction to mining and schools. And they’re using a variety of temporary structure types.

• Steel Buildings – use steel for the internal support and for exterior cladding.
• Inflatable Shelters – use two layers of membrane connected together, the cavity formed between the layers is pressurized with air, keeping the structure erect.
• Fabric Structures – use a rigid steel or aluminum frame and a sturdy fabric outer membrane. Once the frame is erected in place, the fabric cover is stretched (tensioned) over the frame.

Our research at Big Top shows that Fabric Structures offer a number of benefits above other temporary building types. Fabric Structures offer superior durability and ability to withstand weather conditions; maintain a comfortable, constant internal temperature; and, depending on the fabrics used, allow natural light keeping energy costs down. Fabric Shelters can be moved and can be disassembled and stored for future use.

Fabric Structures are very cost effective, up to 70% less than permanent construction, and significantly less than steel buildings. They can be classified as equipment which avoids property taxes.

Many of these benefits were on display in the 2012 Olympics in London. In planning for the games, London identified new permanent structures that needed to be built, but capped their size to fit actual demand and used temporary structures to expand them for the games. Doing so allowed the city to save money and space, and create infrastructure that would best fit the city, not just the games.

Temporary Solutions Are Shaping Future of Business

Economic woes in the last decade have put a lot of pressure on businesses and individuals. And that pressure forced a lot of businesses to think differently about how, why and where they invest their money. Being flexible and adaptable are the new costs of doing business. Responding to changing consumer needs and doing so in a way that doesn’t overextend businesses is critical to future success.

This has not only made temporary solutions more important, but also improved them. In fact, temporary solutions often have many of the same features and benefits of permanent ones, but without the risk and cost.

The examples in this article represent a new future for business and industry. Imagine the possibilities moving forward.

What industries are ripe for temporary solutions? How can temporary solutions change them? What new markets will be created in order to meet the demands for new temporary solutions?