How a job runs
Our Commercial Roofing Process in Dallas
Four steps, run in a fixed order: look at the roof, write down what it needs, build it in phases the building can absorb, then hand over the paperwork that makes upkeep manageable going forward.
The sequence
The order is doing most of the work
Roofing projects rarely go wrong at the welding stage. They go wrong earlier, when a number gets quoted before anybody knows what is under the membrane, and the rest of the job spends its life catching up to that first guess. Reversing the order removes the main source of surprise.
Each step below produces a physical thing you keep: a condition report, a line-item scope, a phasing plan, and a closeout package. If any of those is missing at the end, something was skipped.
Step one
Survey the roof before anything else
A survey covers the entire roof. Every level, every elevation, and the far side of the building as readily as the area beside the hatch. Large fields get walked in a pattern so nothing gets missed by accident, and each finding gets tied to a position on a plan while the crew is standing on it.
Cores answer the questions a walk cannot. A plug taken through the full thickness exposes the layers in order: how many coverings the building already carries, what board sits beneath each one, how deep that board runs, whether it squeezes out water when it is pressed, and what the structural deck turns out to be. Since moisture spreads sideways, cores get taken in a spread across the field and not only where the ceiling is stained.
What comes off the roof is a written condition report: dated photographs keyed to marked locations, the core results, and a list of deficiencies ranked by how soon each one will let water in, with the urgent items kept separate from the ones that can reasonably wait for the next budget cycle.
The field
Covered in a grid so no bay gets skipped. Splits, blisters, punctures, old patches and traffic damage get marked where they sit, not described in general terms.
Cores
Cut at leak locations, in each quadrant, and anywhere the surface reads soft underfoot. Each one is closed with compatible material before the crew comes down.
Drainage
Bowls, sumps, strainers, scuppers and the overflow path. Anywhere water is still sitting two days after rain gets noted, because that is where the membrane ages quickest.
Curbs and penetrations
Unit curbs, pipes, conduit stands, pitch pans, gas line supports and hatches, checked for split corners, stretched sheet and terminations that have crept back.
Laps and edges
Seams probed along the finished edge, not eyeballed. Term bars, coping joints and edge metal checked for lift, open joints and fasteners working loose.
The deck and its load
How many coverings are already up there, the insulation type and thickness beneath each, and the deck material, since those three settle whether the next roof goes over or the old one comes off.
Step two
Put the scope in writing
A scope is a document, not a number. It names the assembly by type and specification, puts a quantity against every line, and states the exclusions on the page rather than leaving them to be discovered halfway through.
Written that way, competing proposals become comparable. If one contractor priced a recover and another priced a tear-off, or one carried deck repair and another assumed the deck was sound, or one built tapered insulation in to fix the slope while another left the ponding alone, the divergence is visible on paper before anybody signs. Two prices that differ by a factor of two almost always describe two different jobs.
Exclusions carry as much weight as inclusions. Interior ceiling and finish repair, mechanical disconnect and reconnect, structural repairs beyond the roof deck, permit and inspection fees, and disposal of material nobody expected to find all need a stated position. Silence on any of them does not make the item disappear. It just moves the decision later in the job, after the contract is signed.
Change orders do not vanish because a scope was written. A deck cannot be fully judged until the covering is off it. What the written scope does is make every change a visible departure from a document both parties already read, priced against unit rates agreed in advance.
Step three
Install around a building that stays open
Phasing gets settled before material is ordered. How the property operates sets the size and shape of each work area: where the trucks are at seven in the morning, which tenant sits beneath which bay, what equipment has to keep running through the week, and where a crane or a hoist can legally be parked.
Areas are then sized so one can be opened and closed inside a single shift, measured against crew count and the forecast. Nothing is left open when the day ends. Every section gets sealed against weather before the crew comes down, including on evenings when the radar looks empty, because North Texas forecasts can still change inside that twelve-hour window.
Access and staging get agreed at the same time. Which stair or ladder the crew uses, where the dumpster sits without blocking a fire lane, where material lands so it is not loaded onto the deck earlier than needed, and who needs an escort through which door. Coordination with your mechanical contractor happens ahead of the week a unit has to be lifted.
Buildings absorb roofing work far more easily when the people inside know what is scheduled above their heads, so the sections due to open each day get posted for your staff and for tenants. Protection goes underneath any area being worked above sensitive space.
Step four
Closeout, and the file you keep afterward
Three documents change hands at the end, and together they are what separates a roof you can manage from a roof you will have to rediscover in five years.
The first is a scaled drawing of the finished roof. It records the layers in the order they were installed, the thickness of the board, the fastener density used in each uplift zone, and the position of every drain, overflow, curb, pipe and access hatch. Transitions get drawn as details: roof to wall, roof to a change in level, roof across an expansion joint. Whoever opens this roof next begins with a drawing rather than an exploratory cut.
The second is the manufacturer paperwork issued for the assembly that went down, turned over whole. Its conditions are the part worth reading, because they are what keeps the document alive: a stated inspection frequency, drainage kept clear, prompt repair by accepted methods, and notice filed inside a set window. Damage caused by another trade working on the roof normally falls outside it.
That paperwork is issued by the manufacturer and it runs between the manufacturer and you. This company does not write it, does not stand behind it, and cannot widen it. What we control is building to the requirements it sets and handing you the complete file, not a cover page.
The third is a maintenance calendar built off those intervals. Two visits a year suits most roofs in this climate, one placed ahead of spring storms and one once summer has finished with the membrane, plus an unscheduled look after any serious hail or wind event. The same reporting format gets used every visit, so a stack of reports reads as a trend, not a pile of unrelated observations.
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