Tag: roofing

Hands On: Exploratory Openings, Mock-ups, and Training

Hands On: Exploratory Openings, Mock-ups, and Training

Matt

Building envelope systems work, or don’t, because of physical real-world details. Air and water don’t care how it’s drawn—the only thing that matters is how it actually is.

Exploratory Openings

When it comes to diagnosing what’s wrong with a building that’s not working right (if it’s leaking, for example) one of the best tools we have are exploratory openings. Sometimes called “probes”, this is essentially disassembling some parts of the building so we can see what’s under the surface.

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The cost of deferred maintenance

The cost of deferred maintenance

Matt

In a reality where funding is scarce and resources are limited, how can you best allocate those dollars to care for your most valuable assets?

Status quo: deferred maintenance

Much of the time, proactive maintenance is viewed as a cost. Those inspections and routine repairs are perceived as money out the door. This widely-held perception has led to deferred maintenance becoming the norm for many facilities.

Deferred maintenance is the practice of postponing maintenance activities such as repairs… in order to save costs, meet budget funding levels, or realign available budget monies. The failure to perform needed repairs could lead to asset deterioration and ultimately asset impairment. Generally, a policy of continued deferred maintenance may result in higher costs, asset failure, and in some cases, health and safety implications. (Wikipedia, emphasis added)

What if, instead, we could better tell the story of how investments in proactive maintenance are not costs but actually grow the bottom line?

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Live Webinar: Understanding & Designing for Moisture Movement

Live Webinar: Understanding & Designing for Moisture Movement

Matt

Update: Watch the webinar on-demand here.

Join CopelandBEC’s Matt Copeland and GAF’s Jennifer Keegan in this live webinar today, September 24, 2025.

Learning Objectives

  1. Differentiate between how moisture moves through airflow and how it moves by way of diffusion through materials and assemblies. 
  2. Explain the code-mandated responsibilities regarding building envelope details.
  3. Develop strategies for meeting standard of care obligations related to including details in your design documents.
  4. Cover the new whole building airtightness testing requirements and how to be prepared for them on your next project.

A quick intro video is below and you can register here.

Reports and repair designs, and when you need each one

Reports and repair designs, and when you need each one

Matt

In our line of work two of the most common deliverables are reports and repair designs. These documents are related, but distinct. They serve different purposes and are for different audiences. In this post we want to clear up some common misconceptions and explain when you need each one.

What are reports?

We use reports to communicate the results of our work.

Often this means presenting the findings of a failure investigation or condition assessment, and explaining what they mean. We might also use a report to document what we saw during a construction phase site visit, or our opinions regarding a construction dispute.

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Twenty five things I’ve learned in twenty five years

Matt

Here are some things I know about buildings, architecture, engineering, and construction after about a quarter century in the field.

  1. There is an enormous gulf between design and construction; we speak different languages and work from vastly different baseline assumptions.
  2. Most buildings have lots of things “wrong” with them; most of these defects don’t actually cause problems.
  3. As an industry we produce approximately a hundred times as much documentation as we read.
  4. The “right way” to do most things is known—we’re not developing new physics here—but few people take the time to do it “right”.
  5. For better or worse, people in AEC learn on the job; college and “book learning” are most helpful as a filter to identify raw talent, intelligence, and grit.
  6. Building envelope fundamentals are easy to understand and extraordinarily difficult to consistently execute.
  7. People will readily grasp onto the irrational (but convenient) hope that something will work this time, despite irrefutable evidence that the same thing has failed multiple times before.
  8. Confidence is convincing, even when unwarranted, and a lot of people are very confident in their ill-founded opinions.
  9. Certainty and construction don’t go together; everything is best discussed in terms of risk and probability.
  10. We mostly learn from painful failures, and even then we learn very slowly.
  11. Imagination and emotion are a lot more powerful than track record.
  12. Building inspectors have way too much on their plates; most people think inspectors are responsible for checking far more than they actually have time, resources, or knowledge to inspect.
  13. We’re pretty good at building structures that don’t fall down, but beyond that we’re shockingly bad at consistently nailing basics like making buildings warm, dry, comfortable, and durable.
  14. The tools don’t really matter. Many of the most impressive structures in human history were built (and have survived) without electricity, never mind AutoCAD, Revit, AI, AR/VR, drones, smartphones, tablet computers, ubiquitous internet, or digital photography.
  15. Architecture in 2025 is much more about “design” as an art form than it is about creating a functional “machine for living”. This is neither good nor bad, but it’s important to be aware of.
  16. Construction in 2025 is as reliant as ever on the knowledge, skill, dedication, mindset, and mood of the individual humans showing up on the job site each day.
  17. It’s easier to get good results by doing simple at 9 out of 10, rather than aiming for complex and sophisticated but only executing at 5 out of 10.
  18. Did I mention that no one reads anything?
  19. “This is better but it costs more” loses every time—your audience hears “this is better but it’s also worse”… it doesn’t make sense. If what you mean is “this is better because it will cost less in the long run” then say that, and define “long run” so people can make informed decisions.
  20. Nobody cares about the backstory; get to the punchline.
  21. We’ve apparently perfected construction drawings; they haven’t changed in 25 years (or really ever).
  22. Contracts are of questionable utility; when things go sideways everyone gets pulled in and people claim whatever they want to claim, regardless of what the contract says.
  23. There are very few people on the planet who understand the difference between water vapor transport by airflow vs. by diffusion and how these relate to condensation risk. I like to think I’m one of them and I wrote a post about it to help spread the word (see also: #3 and #18).
  24. Roofing is like tires: unglamorous, essential, and needs regular inspection and periodic replacement to avoid dangerous failures. Yet people often ignore both their tires and their roofs.
  25. It is impossible to compare design and construction service proposals “apples to apples”. Procuring these services through a low bid process is a waste of time for all parties involved.

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