Everything Building Envelope Paul Beers - GCI Consultants, LLC

About The Everything Building Envelope Podcast: Everything Building Envelope℠ is a dedicated podcast and video forum for understanding the building envelope. Our podcast series discusses current trends and issues that contractors, developers, and building owners have to deal with related to pre and post-construction. Our series touches on various topics related to water infiltration, litigation, and construction methods related to the building envelope.
https://www.everythingbuildingenvelope.com
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Dan: Welcome, everyone, to our “Everything Building Envelope Podcast.” I am Dan Johnson, senior consultant for GCI Consultants, and I will be your host today. I am really excited today to have as our guest, Todd Frederick, who is the owner and CEO of FreMarq Innovations, which is a highly performance curtain wall company located in Central Wisconsin, that was established in 2016. Prior to that, his company was FM Enterprises, which was established in 1996. I believe we have an interesting topic today, which is all about how FreMarq's technology helps with energy conservation, dollar savings, and reduces a building's overall carbon footprint. So, Todd, let's start off by having you tell our audience a little bit about yourself and your area of expertise, and then we can jump right into our podcast.
Todd: Great. Thank you, Dan. Well, I started in the curtain wall window industry in 1981, and I worked for a large window curtain wall manufacturer here in Central Wisconsin until '96, at which time I started my first company, FM Enterprises, which primarily we did a lot of storefront doors, custom fabrication, and gradually built into the curtain wall market. And that lasted until about 19-, or I'm sorry, 2010, at which time I decided I was gonna retire for a while, but that didn't last long. And in 2015, I decided it was time for someone to look at curtain wall framing systems, primarily to provide a high-performance thermal product. Up until that time, most people, architects, designers, would refer to the center of glass and really didn't take the account of the framing aspects into place. So, like I said, in 2015, I started to look at that. In 2016, I developed FreMarq Innovations, and that's what we do today is we look at framing. We provide highly thermal products to improve thermal performance of a building envelope and save money for building owners.
Dan: Okay. Well, that's quite a history, and I know as we talked a little bit earlier, you and I had worked together, you know, in our former lives also, and I'm glad that we're able to talk again. So, I know you had talked about this a little bit. Why is it important to have a high-performing building envelope?
Todd: Well, our research has found that buildings account for approximately 40% of all carbon emissions globally, which is a huge impact on our climate change. In addition, approximately $20 billion of energy leak out of commercial building windows each year, so both new and old windows, making this an economical issue for building owners. A high-performance envelope, which includes windows and curtain wall, will not only make a positive impact on our environment, but will also save money for building owners by reducing energy and maintenance costs, which I feel is a win-win for everybody.
Dan: Yes. I do agree with you 100%, but kind of the old adage out there, you know, money is everything. So, how has the industry responded so far to high-performance products?

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About The Everything Building Envelope Podcast: Everything Building Envelope℠ is a dedicated podcast and video forum for understanding the building envelope. Our podcast series discusses current trends and issues that contractors, developers and building owners have to deal with related to pre and post construction. Our series touches on various topics related to water infiltration, litigation and construction methods related to the building envelope.
https://www.everythingbuildingenvelope.com
*** Subscribe to the show and leave us a Review on ITunes!
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Alfonso: Welcome, everyone, to our “Everything Building Envelope” podcast. I am Alfonso Alzamora, Vice President and Principal with GCI Consultants, and I will be your host today. I am really excited today to have as our guest one of our partners and engineers that I work with here at GCI, Jason Bondurant. Jason, since you are a repeat guest, let's just jump right into today's podcast.
In this podcast, we will highlight our services and talk about the different types of projects that we are involved with, where we work, and whom we work with. For those who haven't worked with us in the past, GCI is a consulting and engineering firm that specializes in the exterior building envelope. The building envelope is the part of the building that separates the interior from the exterior. It includes the roofs, walls, windows, doors, and foundations. Our specialty services primarily include property condition assessments, forensic investigations, expert witness services for construction defects and first-party insurance claims, and quality assurance inspections and testing. So, Jason, let's dig into each of these services and discuss scenarios in which we help our clients.
Jason: Yes. And I'm glad that we have the opportunity to discuss our services today, that following the tragic collapse of the Champlain Tower South in Surfside and the subsequent passing of the condominium safety bill in Florida, there's been a greater interest from building owners in hiring engineering firms to evaluate their buildings. One of the main concerns that owners typically have is with the envelopes of their buildings. The types of assessments that GCI performs is different from the typical 40-year structural and electrical recertification process. Instead, we offer a more specialized assessment of the building envelope systems.
We focus on a variety of forensic procedures to evaluate the condition and performance of these various building envelope components. These evaluations are useful to building owners because they can provide them with an overview of the general condition of the building's walls, windows, roofing, and waterproofing systems, and they can be useful when planning for maintenance or repairs.
I recently did a building envelope condition assessment at a high-end home in South Florida that's located directly on the ocean, and it was relatively a new construction. And the owner was experiencing some problems with their building. They were starting to have some problems with water intrusion around windows, and they started to see some cracks in the exterior stucco, and because of that, they were concerned about the overall condition of the building envelope and the construction of the home. So, they hired GCI to come and do a condition assessment of the full building. And our assessment on this particular project included the roof, the walls, windows, balconies,
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About The Everything Building Envelope Podcast: Everything Building Envelope℠ is a dedicated podcast and video forum for understanding the building envelope. Our podcast series discusses current trends and issues that contractors, developers and building owners have to deal with related to pre and post construction. Our series touches on various topics related to water infiltration, litigation and construction methods related to the building envelope.
https://www.everythingbuildingenvelope.com
*** Subscribe to the show and leave us a Review on ITunes!
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Dan: Welcome everyone to our “Everything Building Envelope” podcast. I am Dan Johnson, the senior consultant for GCI Consultants, and I will be your host today. I'm excited to have as a guest, Jim Bell, the director of operations for the National Storm Shelter Association. Today, our topic is What Are Storm Shelters and What are The Requirements for a Storm Shelter? Let's start off by having you tell our audience a little bit about yourself, and then we'll jump into our podcast.
Jim: Good morning, Dan, and nice to be here. I started out with wind codes after riding out Hurricane Andrew in South Florida. I was on the fringe of it, the county north of Dade County, and it affected us a lot. And going down and looking at the damage that following weekend, it was…it amazed me, and it lit a fire in me. And I got involved with the codes there and it kind of expanded and went on to the tornado codes, and I joined the National Storm Shelter Association, which at the time was outta Texas Tech with Dr. Kiesling. And I've since gotten very involved with the national codes and all about shelters.
Dan: Okay. Jim, I know…you and I go back aways back to my storm shelter testing days. And so I know that you've just briefly been with NSSA. So, what is the NSSA and what does it serve the industry?
Jim: Yes. Thanks. The NSSA is an organization started in 2000. It was really started after a series of severe tornadoes in the Lubbock area, near Texas Tech. And there was a professor of wind sciences at Texas Tech, Dr. Ernst Kiesling, who started up this organization to talk about how we can prevent loss of life in tornado events. And he is considered the grandfather of the aboveground tornado shelter, and they did a lot of studies. The NSSA was the group that put together the ICC 500, which is the building code in the International Building Code, which covers the United States for shelters, and then partnered with ICC who then took the code as an ICC standard. And the ICC 500 is NSSA/ICC 500 in the code, which covers how you build a safe room.
Dan: I was just gonna say [inaudible 00:02:49] the NSSA is basically, it's like a trade association comprised of many different building officials and also shelter manufacturers, correct?
Jim: Correct. We have a membership of industry professionals, architects, engineers. We also have producer members who produce, you know, pre-manufactured shelters for the home, site build shelters, and then the officials who actually build the community-type large shelters in schools and other types of buildings. We also work with building officials and emergency managers. And then the associations like FEMA and NOAA, and NIST are some of the other people that are members of NSSA.
Dan: Okay. Yeah. I know that NSSA and ICC 500 goes from large structures down to residences. But for just kind single-family residents,
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About The Everything Building Envelope Podcast: Everything Building Envelope℠ is a dedicated podcast and video forum for understanding the building envelope. Our podcast series discusses current trends and issues that contractors, developers and building owners have to deal with related to pre and post construction. Our series touches on various topics related to water infiltration, litigation and construction methods related to the building envelope.
https://www.everythingbuildingenvelope.com
*** Subscribe to the show and leave us a Review on ITunes!
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Paul: Hello, everyone, welcome to “The Everything Building Envelope Podcast.” This is Paul Beers, CEO and Managing Member for GCI Consultants and I will be your host today. We're gonna do Part 2 of a podcast that we started last month with our Senior Consultant, Dan Johnson, and dig deeper into the topic of windows and doors and testing and whatnot. Dan joined our team of experts in April of this year, and he's been a really strong addition to our team. So welcome back, Dan.
Dan: Yeah, thank you, Paul.
Paul: Yeah, so we had a really interesting discussion, there was so much to talk about that we decided that it'd be good to have a Part 2 here. And I'm really excited about that. Just for those that may not have listened to Part 1, maybe you can give a little run-through of your background before we get into today's topic.
Dan: Yeah, definitely, I'd be happy to. I graduated with a BSc. degree in engineering technology with a quality control emphasis. And out of college, I went right into the building and construction industry as a test technician for a number of years testing windows and doors for air-water, structural performance, acoustic performance.
And then as I progressed in my career, I've built a couple of different laboratories for architectural testing and then one for Intertek Testing Services, continuing in the air, water, structural testing of windows, doors, curtain walls, mock-ups. And then also in the thermal testing for U-value and concepts and resistance factor testing. A little over 34 years of experience in both laboratory and field, quality control, and forensic testing and valuation services.
Paul: Cool. So let's talk a little bit about…so you've been with GCI now for what like about six months, I think, and coming up on six months. So what have you been doing since you joined GCI and what's your role at this point?
Dan: My role at GCI has been a new position has kind of been evolving. I've been assisting with not only the GCI podcast and blogs, but as I've become acquainted with GCI customers, I am the window expert for GCI Consultants. And what that entails is basically going on-site, reviewing claims that are potential litigation claims, and just confirming that the windows and doors have been installed correctly, tested correctly. And then assisting window manufacturers in the final result of litigation claims, depositions, court appearances, or testimonials, and that type of thing.
So the role is continually evolving. I'm also just, you know, with my testing background and becoming…I'm accredited for field testing, so I'm assisting with that transition. So I'm working with training our technicians and the other consultants.
Paul: So on the consulting side, who typically would be your client, or who would hire you for a GCI assignment?
Dan: Typically,
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About The Everything Building Envelope Podcast: Everything Building Envelope℠ is a dedicated podcast and video forum for understanding the building envelope. Our podcast series discusses current trends and issues that contractors, developers and building owners have to deal with related to pre and post construction. Our series touches on various topics related to water infiltration, litigation and construction methods related to the building envelope.
https://www.everythingbuildingenvelope.com
*** Subscribe to the show and leave us a Review on ITunes!
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Paul: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the “Everything Building Envelope” podcast. This is Paul Beers, CEO and managing member for GCI Consultants, and I will be your host today. I thought it would be interesting to talk with our very own senior consultant, Dan Johnson about his experience in the world of windows. Dan joined our team of experts in April this year, and is a strong addition to our team. So, Dan, welcome.
Dan: Yeah, thank you, Paul.
Paul: So, Dan, why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself, and then we'll go back and do a deeper dive?
Dan: Okay. Thank you, Paul. Yeah, and I'll be glad. As I mentioned, you know, thanks for allowing me to join GCI. And, kind of, my experiences. My college education is I was engineering and technology with a quality management emphasis. And then when I graduated college, of course, the typical, you need the experience, and so I got a job as a test technician with Twin City Testing Corporation.
My role there, I was their laboratory air, water, structural, and acoustical technician. We tested anything from doors, windows, to interior walls, exterior walls. And then also, I was responsible for doing the field testing for windows, and doors, and curtain walls for air infiltration and water penetration testing, and also, the acoustical testing in the field. I was there for a couple of years, and then when architectural testing wanted to expand into the Midwest of the United States, they contacted me to assist. And there, we built a lab. That was in 1990. And that lab, we did the full series of testing for air, water, structural for window and door manufacturers. We also tested on insulated glass and also safety glazing.
We were a small lab at the time. We had… I'll be honest, we had three employees. But as we grew, my responsibilities also grew along with that. So I was responsible for, initially, you know, for basically all of the field testing, which ranged from, you know, quality control testing, all the way through forensic evaluations. And then as we grew, we outgrew the space. And we moved into a larger space, which allowed us to expand into the thermal testing realm, which thermal testing is basically, you know, determining your U-values and your condensation existence factors based on the NFRC and AAMA test procedures. And so I assisted our company, and we built the thermal chamber. And at that time, it was Saint Paul, Minnesota.
And then also, run, did the installs, the evaluations. I became the person responsible charge for NFRC. And then also along with thermal testing, we expanded into more of the insulated glass testing, which we tested mostly for the Insulated Glass Certification Council, and then also for ALI and MAM [SP] for their certification programs.
We lasted there for about 15 years. During that time, we were purchased by Intertek Testing Services. And then we ran outta space once again,
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In this episode, Chris Matthews, President and Principal for GCI Consultants, speaks with Vincent Decicco, owner of Full Frame Virtual Reality. They discuss hurricane preparedness, documentation of structure conditions prior to an event, and what people can do as policyholders to protect themselves and document their structures and their possessions.
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