Northgate Retail Center

The challenge

Eleven tenants, one shared roof, and eleven separate leases that all said the same thing about interrupted trading. The existing exposed-fastener panels were twenty-two years old and every screw through the face had become a small annual gamble; several had backed out far enough to let water track down the threads. Replacing the roof was straightforward. Replacing it above eleven businesses that could not afford to close for even a morning was not.

What we did

We rolled the panels to length on site, which removed every horizontal seam from the field and also removed the need to store long material anywhere near the shopfronts. The work was sequenced tenant by tenant rather than slope by slope, so no unit ever had open deck above it at opening time, and each section was dried in before the crew came down for the day. Standing seam with concealed clips replaced the old exposed fasteners, so nothing now penetrates the weather surface and the metal is free to move through the seasons. All the flashing at the parapets and the rooftop units was bent on site to fit rather than ordered in stock lengths.

The result

Nine working days, zero closed doors, and no trading hours lost by any tenant. The centre manager kept the sequencing plan and now uses it as the template for the other two properties in the group.

“Nine days of roofing above a trading centre and our worst complaint was about the noise on one Tuesday afternoon.”