Lake Fong, Post-Gazette Michael Spicer, product sample designer of Davison Design and Development, rides a Segway, an electric scooter, at the company's office. Click photo for larger image.

In the hallway of Davison Design & Development, Michael Spicer spins on a Segway while wearing a ponytail and a white lab coat. Another employee in a lab coat whizzes by him on a BikeBoard, a combination bicycle/skateboard.

At the O'Hara-based product development company, it's just another day at the office.

For the first decade or so of Davison Design, a company that develops new products based on in-house ideas and those submitted by outside inventors, employees managed to make their way around the office using their own two feet.

Then, about three years ago, company founder George M. Davison bought a Segway and brought it to work with him.

"He came flying through our department," said Curtis Wierman, senior director of inventegration, a made-up word combining invention and integration. "That was the spark of the whole transportation-at-work thing."

Two years ago, the design department of the 275-employee company moved into an 80,000-square-foot facility in RIDC Park.

One day, Mr. Wierman wore a pedometer to track how far he was walking just in the course of doing his job. The tally: about four miles. These days, in the interest of time, he often hops on a BikeBoard instead.

The BikeBoard landed the company in BusinessWeek magazine in July after it won an Industrial Design Excellence Award. The company also received less favorable media attention this year after it was ordered by the Federal Trade Commission to pay $26 million to inventors who claimed the company had misrepresented itself.

At the office, however, attention is focused on the BikeBoards. About 40 of them float around the design facility at any one time, largely because all design employees received one for free.

"You always see them parked outside the restroom," said communications director Ben Bowser, noting a popular destination.

Besides Segways and BikeBoards, Mr. Bowser said he also has seen employees traveling about the office on scooters, wheelchairs -- even a rickshaw.

In an office environment built on invention, many of the BikeBoards have been modified, some with trash cans, baskets or boxes attached to carry papers and supplies from place to place. Mr. Spicer added sound, a shelf and a parking brake to his BikeBoard.

"If you leave anything out, it becomes parts," he said. "This is an inventive place. Creative people do creative things."