NIXON Hire is ramping up its modular building capabilities in Scotland following the introduction of a Modular Buildings Centre of Excellence, complementing its already well-established depot in Dundee.
The sustainable products specialist celebrated the milestone at ScotPlant 2026, where Nixon’s stand featured an eight-bay modular building at the heart of a fully operational sustainable site set-up running in live conditions.
Andrew Shaw, head of modular buildings at Nixon Hire, revealed he can’t remember a time when Scotland had such a buoyant pipeline of infrastructure projects, particularly in sectors such as renewables. He’s hoping Nixon’s modular offering will benefit a client base looking to boost ESG credentials and provide quality facilities for workers on-site.
“The Scottish market is hugely important for us,” Andrew said. “It makes up 30% of our depot network. We have five depots in Scotland which provide a geographical benefit to our clients, with experience there for over 40 years.
“If you look at what’s on the horizon in Scotland now, in terms of the multiple sector projects in the Highlands, Scotland is presenting a considerable infrastructure pipeline, possibly the largest that I’ve seen in my lifetime. I don’t remember it being as buoyant as it is now. The future of major projects in Scotland is huge.
“What drove us to launch a (specialist modular) depot in Scotland was customer demand. When I looked at my pipeline in modular alone, Scotland made up a huge part of it. In fact, in terms of numbers it was probably the largest area outside of London.”
Nixon Hire’s Dundee depot can trace its history back to the days when the business was primarily a plant company. This is the first time modular buildings are being directly delivered out of Scotland, with Andrew believing Dundee’s geographical location makes it well suited to service the central belt as well as both northern and southern Scottish locations.
Nixon Hire’s client specific modular building designs are created in-house. The company boasts that its panelised system is the ‘most versatile and sustainable’ hire product on the market, with additional carbon savings possible when combining these buildings with Nixon’s other renewable power products.
Typical facilities include modern kitchens and canteens, spacious meeting rooms, and comfortable offices.
Andrew explained that modular buildings are increasingly in demand on major projects. Recent milestones include a complex install in a constrained Edinburgh city centre site, where a tower crane had to be utilised to drop it in. Other major projects have included the delivery of 270 modular units to a large data centre initiative, and over 100 units to energy from waste sites.
Andrew, who has worked in modular for 17 years, said the increased popularity of the buildings is being driven by both a sustainability perspective and staff retention. In a highly competitive labour market, contractors who provide employees with superior working environments are at an advantage.
“I remember years ago when the Considerate Constructors Scheme first came in, that was supposed to be first steps towards stepping away from stereotypical construction worker environments,” Andrew continued. “If you go into work every day and you’re going to be there for three years on a project, you want to be somewhere that’s a nice environment. Changing the face of construction isn’t easy, but over the last ten years I’ve seen a big change. It is completely different now to what it was. It’s more professional. Even the way people interact with each other has changed dramatically. There’s a massive focus on site accommodation.”
Andrew also believes sustainable products are becoming better understood by the end user. Whereas once people thought they were simply too expensive, he revealed that customers increasingly now realise the long-term savings – both carbon and monetary – can offset the upfront costs.
At ScotPlant, Andrew said feedback from visitors to Nixon’s modular solutions – and sustainable products generally – was hugely positive.
“Everyone was interested in the fact that we offer full-service site solutions, not just one thing or another,” he added. “The building we’re delivering is truly sustainable. They provide incredibly strong thermal values, which means it supports our renewable energy division as well.
“It retains the heat that you generate and helps our renewable products perform to the optimum value. Unlike a traditional modular building, we don’t rip walls down when someone wants to reconfigure it.”
Traditionally, Andrew explained that modular buildings would go out on hire and come back in the same configuration. If the customer then wanted something different, you’d have to rip a wall down, buy more plasterboard and timber, and create a new wall.
“With our building, you just move the wall because it’s fully modular, not partially modular,” he stated. “A lot of modular buildings are not fully modular. You can’t move internal walls, and you can’t move external walls. Ours is a fully customisable, modular system. Every unit has its own distribution board and its own electrical feed.
“The feedback we had (at ScotPlant) was that we’ve taken sustainability to another level.”
