Howard Building Corporation

Project Description

Jaguar Land Rover's Western Region Training Academy, located in Irvine, serves the largest geographic region for Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) in the United States.  The Academy is responsible for training staff at 83 Jaguar and Land Rover franchises at 55 retail locations in 13 states; everywhere from California to Alaska, Colorado, New Mexico, Hawaii, and even Guam.  They expect more than 2,400 retail staff to go through this training center each year. 

Jaguar Land Rover teamed with SDA Architects and Designers and Howard Building Corporation to build their facility.  Utilizing an existing 27,000 square-foot complex, the facility has been completely re-formatted to meet JLR's needs.  It features a state-of-the-art service training center with flexible, high tech classrooms and workshops.  A showroom, built to mimic JLR retail stores, allows sales and product specialists to experience a “real life” static vehicle display for sales training, with brand specific training rooms immediately adjacent.

Much of the work that HBC completed involved extensive wall preparation and bracing to support large scale wall graphics hung throughout the space.  Glass fronted training rooms adjoin a large break area that includes a kitchen.  Upstairs office space provides both private offices and open work areas, with furniture provided by Corporate Business Interiors (CBI).  Exterior upgrades were made to allow transfer of vehicles into the showroom with a ramp and double doors installed on the exterior of the building.  In the mechanical training bays a service mezzanine was constructed, and base building electrical components were relocated to allow more ground floor area.  There was also extensive coordination with multiple owner-managed vendors to install the infrastructure for the auto lifts and the specialized ventilation system in the bays.