Container office, park home or brick building: which one fits?

When a business or a site needs more space, the choice usually comes down to three options: a converted shipping container, a prefabricated park home, or a conventional brick building. Each one is the right answer for someone. The wrong one costs you money either up front or later.

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Converted container

A container starts as a strong, weather-tight steel box. Converted, it has openings cut for doors and windows, is insulated, lined and fitted out, then delivered and craned onto a prepared base.

• Secure: steel walls, steel doors and roller shutters are hard to break into
• Movable: it can be lifted onto a truck and taken to the next site
• Quick on site: most of the work happens in the yard, not on your property
• Fixed sizes: a standard container is about 2.4 metres wide outside, so every layout has to work within that width

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Park home

A park home is a prefabricated building made from panels on a light frame, delivered in sections and put together on site. It goes up quickly and can be built to wider floor plans than a container. The trade-off is strength: lightweight panels are easier to damage and to break into than steel or brick, which matters on a site that stands empty at night.

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Brick building

Brick is the permanent option. It takes the longest, needs foundations and approved plans, and stays where it is built. For a building that will be used in one place for decades, that is exactly what you want.

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Five questions that decide it

1. How long will you need it?
   Months or a few years points to a container or a park home. Decades in one place points to brick.
2. Will it have to move?
   If the space has to follow the work from site to site, a container is the one of the three built to be lifted and moved.
3. Is it safe when nobody is there?
   On an open site or in a remote yard, steel is hard to beat.
4. How big does it need to be?
   Containers can be set side by side or joined, but a wide open floor plan is simpler in a park home or in brick.
5. What will the municipality require?
   A building used as an office, a shop or a home may need approved plans whichever option you choose. Check before you buy.

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Talk it through first

We convert containers into offices, shops and stores, and we build in face brick, so we can tell you which one fits the job. Tell us what the space is for, how long you need it and where it is going, and we will quote it.