Expanding on the existing corporate office facility located in Savannah, Ga., Great Dane officially broke ground on the site of a brand new research and development campus. According to the company, the state-of-the-art complex will serve as a hub for its engineering and design initiatives and as an educational experience for both customers and employees.
“Great Dane’s history in Southeast Georgia dates back to around the turn of the 20th century, when we were originally known as the Savannah Blow Pipe Company,” said Bill Crown, Great Dane president and CEO. “As it grew, the company changed to meet the evolving needs of its customers, investing time and resources into research, development and engineering. Over the past 30 years, the tremendous work done by Great Dane’s entire engineering team has yielded countless cutting-edge innovations in materials and products that have advanced the entire trucking industry.”
The new campus will include the renovation of the current corporate office space and three newly-constructed buildings that will be LEED certified. According to the U.S. Building Green Council, this means the spaces will be designed and built using strategies aimed at achieving high performance in key areas of human and environmental health: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality, Great Dane said.
The 30,000-sq.-ft. engineering building will include a 3,600-sq.-ft. conference center, customer preview showroom and technology “garden,” which will house interactive, hands-on educational displays featuring Great Dane products and materials. Research and development will receive a 27,000-sq.-ft. building to accommodate a manufacturing engineering lab for building custom fixtures and testing automation equipment. The corrosion lab also will be housed there, as well as testing facilities for large and small-scale components, quality assurance and thermal efficiency, according to the company.
A separate 5,500-sq.-ft. building will be erected for Great Dane’s full-scale road simulator, capable of testing trailers, truck bodies and buses. Full-scale automated trailer floor fatigue testing will also take place there.
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