Expanding on the existing corporate office facility located at 602 E. Lathrop Ave. in Savannah, Ga., Great Dane has officially broken ground on the site of a brand new research and development campus.

The complex will serve as a hub for the company's engineering and design initiatives and as an educational experience for customers and employees.

The new campus will include the renovation of the current corporate office space and three new-construction buildings that will be LEED certified. According to the U.S. Building Green Council, this means the spaces will be designed and built keeping in mind the following: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality.

The new Engineering building will encompass more than 30,000 square feet of space and will include a 3,600-square-foot conference center, customer preview showroom and technology "garden," which will house interactive, hands-on educational displays demonstrating Great Dane products and materials.

Research and Development will receive a new 27,000-square-foot building for a manufacturing engineering lab for building custom fixtures and testing automation equipment. The corrosion lab will also be housed here, as well as testing facilities for large and small-scale components, quality assurance and thermal efficiency.

A separate 5,500-square-foot 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 here.

"When the new Technology Center is complete, we will be able to further test our research and design innovations in a state-of-the-art setting, train employees and educate our customers as we all work together to find solutions to best fit their needs," says Rick Mullininx, executive vice president, engineering.