Employee Spotlight – Rob Horlacher

How Long have you been in the modular building industry and what roles have you held?
In early 2002 I left my job at an above ground tank manufacturer to take a position at Mobile Modular Express in Joppa, MD to assume a role as a draftsman/designer not knowing anything about modular buildings. Through working for very talented management and a great team, I was able to rise through the ranks, doing lead engineering, sales, procurement, plant management and finally ending up as a general manager of Maryland production. In March of 2014 I wanted a change and moved from the manufacturing side of the industry to join the great team at Modular Genius.

With working at Modular Genius, I have been given great opportunities to continue working through engineering of projects, but then all the way to turning the keys over to the customer. To date, I have been able to work on projects ranging from small footprint SCIF modular to (42) section, three story office buildings to modular emergency rooms.

Favorite/Most Interesting Project
Through the many fascinating projects, I have worked on through my career, my most interesting project to date has to be a series of modular BSL2/BSL3 and chemical laboratory buildings that were used for testing and R&D for the detection and containment of war time chem/bio agents. Each modular lab had a small footprint in size (roughly 850 sq. ft.), but had all of the functioning capabilities of a full size, brick/mortar laboratory, including negative pressure spaces, bag in/bag out HEPA filtration, welded stainless steel ductwork, installed glove boxes, fume hoods, triple gasketed customer doors and one off custom designed laboratory furniture. Additionally, each work area was fitted for multi-system laboratory gas generators/distribution systems and vacuum systems.

Each of the roughly (14) different labs served purposes from testing agriculture imports to nerve agents at service bases. While the technical aspects of each of the labs designed and built were truly fascinating to work with, the most enjoyable part of each laboratory unit was the ability to learn in detail the specifics of how each laboratory team worked to help detect and contain each agent, to help the front line soldiers and military support.

Hobbies
When not watching my son play ice hockey or playing myself, my main “obsession” is of sailboat racing, sailboat restoration and design. My ultimate goal is to eventually head offshore one day and cross an ocean or two.