Repetition, Communication, and Coordination: A Modular QSR Case Study

The workload between the design firm and the manufacturer was set. The two communicated constantly, with Gelatt providing on-the-ground updates as the module was being delivered and installed.

“I’ll be out in the field during the install so I can come back and give feedback,” he said. “That way, I can tell the design team and the factory ‘hey this worked really well, let’s keep it.’ ‘Let’s, look at tweaking this? This is what happened when we did this.’”

Taking the standard parameters and design elements of a QSR and shipping it by a double-drop deck trailer as one cohesive prefabricated functional unit took some creative thinking. Which is where Jesse and his team at CSHQA came in. How could they place a unit that was about 16 feet and 10 inches wide and 40 feet in length?

“We need more detail, more understanding and more accuracy in our drawings on some of these,” said Goldman. “We’re looking at plumbing accuracy to the quarter of an inch, whereas that’s well beyond the accuracy or what we would ever draw on a stick-built building.”

Considerations for Installing a QSR Module

Modules can be installed in any number of ways, especially if you’re working with multiple units. The decision to deliver it as a whole unit however, eliminated the need to address matelines. It also left the question of how to install the unit upon arrival. The size of the unit also made setting a bit thornier.

“Traditionally if you were doing more of a traditional modular retail housing unit, you would never go up to that wide. You would bring in multiple units and have a mateline in between the units,” said Goldman. “What was different and what made this effective with the QSR model was not having that mateline and reducing the time it took to set the unit and to not have to see together two units, which would take a week or two that let them start selling products sooner.”

Keeping efficiency in mind, Goldman and CSHQA decided that a top-picked unit was the way to go.

Delivering a Super Wide Module Across the Country

As the QSR was delivered whole to reduce time spent on setting the module on the foundation, that created another series of obstacles. There was the matter of how to ship the parapet. If the parapet was connected from the get-go, the unit would be too tall to ship.

In the end, the top pick served a two-fold purpose.

“Jesse and his team took it a step further where that top pick is that connection,” said Gelatt. “Now we’re sticking the parapet over top of it and now reusing that connection to fasten down the parapet to the modular building. It’s that type of thinking that leads to the success of the project, the efficiency of the project.”

While the dimensions were not completely out of the norm for a module, driving a module that was a little over 1600 feet wide by 40 feet in length was going to be another puzzle to sort out. Ultimately it was decided that the unit would travel on a double drop deck trailer.

The first one shipped from Durant, Oklahoma to Osceola, Arkansas—a distance of at least 500 miles. The third one is making an even longer trip out to the Pacific Northwest, or about 2,000 miles.