Office Building Roofing in Missoula, MT

Tenants notice a roof job through their ceilings and their ears, so the order of work follows the floor plan. Which suites sit under the loud work. Which ones have meetings at nine. Which entrances stay open. If the crane pick is scheduled before those answers are known, the first complaint arrives on the first morning. In Missoula, MT about 55% of employment is in service and retail, so many tenants have customers and clients walking in. An office roof is a tenant-relations job with a membrane attached, and we plan it that way.

Office buildings carry heating and cooling units on the roof, and each sits on a curb. The curbs are the second most common leak source after drains. When the roof is replaced, the units either stay and are flashed around, or are lifted and reset. A lift needs a crane, a mechanical contractor and a shutdown window.

We schedule that lift for a time when the tenants can tolerate a short outage, and we tell them in advance. Air intakes are located and screened so fumes and dust do not enter the offices. Our curb and support work rebuilds each curb in the same window, so the new flashing sits under the new unit.

Mixed-use buildings add a medical or professional tenant with special needs. A medical office suite on the top floor of an otherwise ordinary office building brings infection control and quiet hours into the plan. The same applies to a county or city tenant in a building that also houses a government office, where public hours and security screening set when the crew can be on site.

Missoula has more than 60 National Register buildings, and an office building in the downtown core may have a parapet, cornice or roofline that cannot change. A reroof on such a building starts with a review of what is protected, and the approval path takes time. Parapets, coping and cornice flashings are repaired in kind where required.

Downtown deliveries are tight, and the crane pick may need a street permit and a flagger. The University District around the University of Montana and the Brooks Street and Southgate Midtown corridor each need their own staging plan, one that names the lift days and the doors that stay open.

Access to the roof is a safety item on older buildings. Ladders, hatches and parapet heights vary, and fall protection is set up before anyone walks the roof. If a building lacks safe access, adding a permanent ladder or a guarded hatch is part of the project and is priced as its own line.

Most office roofs are low-slope. TPO and EPDM are common choices for their price and speed. Modified bitumen suits roofs with heavy equipment traffic. The choice comes from budget, tenant tolerance and how much life the roof has left. Energy code sets the insulation level on a replacement. Each option comes with a price, its tenant impact and the remaining life of what is there, so the owner and the property manager choose together.

Energy is part of the decision. A replacement that adds insulation lowers the load on the building's heating and cooling. Rooftop equipment efficiency matters more, but the roof sets the thermal envelope. The findings sheet shows the insulation level in place, the level the code requires and the cost to bridge the gap.