When you think about portable office buildings, your mind may conjure up images of mobile office trailers but portable office buildings have come a long way. Today's modular building systems produce portable office buildings that most people can tell from traditional construction and the quality of portable office buildings is higher than that of its traditional construction counterparts.

When materials are delivered to a factory specializing in the construction of portable office buildings, they are stored under cover, protected from the elements and assembled indoors. Building in climate-controlled conditions enables manufacturers to avoid weather-related defects caused by rain and snow, strong winds, freezing temperatures, and searing heat.

After a portable office buildings are built at the factory, they are wrapped tightly with protective covering for the journey to the site. This prevents unwanted moisture from saturating the lumber, drywall, and insulation. Keeping the moisture content down also reduces the chances for mold to grow.

Within hours of removing the coverings, the set crew makes the portable office building as weather tight as possible even when the siding installation is delayed. The means the interior materials are better protected from the weather.

A site builder's materials are exposed to the weather as soon as they are dropped off at the site. They continue to be subjected to the elements while the building is framed. Only when the building is finally closed in, which can be weeks later, is it protected from inclement weather.

Even good-quality materials swell when soaked in a rainstorm. Once wet framing materials dry out, they shrink, twist, and bend, causing problems and challenges such as bowed walls, drywall cracks, squeaky floors, and protruding nails or screws.

A climate-controlled factory environment offers two additional advantages for portable office buildings. First, it enables modular manufacturers to avoid weather-related delays that prevent a customer from occupying the building on schedule. In fact, it allows portable office buildings to be constructed year round. Second, it eliminates the poor workmanship that can result when construction crews have to work in either very cold or very hot conditions.

Portable office buildings are constructed to meet or exceed local and state building codes. There are several reasons why a manufacturer would exceed the building code. First, it has to build portable office buildings strong enough to be transported and set up, which is a factor that does not come in to play for site builders.

Second, if a manufacturer sells portable office buildings in several states, it may be more economical to build them all to the same code specifications, which means they will be built to meet the most demanding building codes. There are many more advantages to modular building systems that will be covered in future articles on the topic of portable office buildings.