Glaziers face new challenges with condo projects

In a commercial office project, the contract glaziers looks to approval from one source—the building owner. In large-scale residential projects, however, glaziers often require approval from every single unit owner, says Bill John, president of InterClad in Plymouth, Minn.

“For these residential projects, you can be dealing with 100 homeowners, and all it takes is one to get mad,” John says.

A big challenge switching from commercial office projects to condominiums is that homeowners carry very different expectations about their windows than office owners and tenants, he says.

Imperfections that go unnoticed by a commercial owner are scrutinized by residential unit owners. “If this is your house, you’re going to look at everything very closely before you sign off,” John says.

Mike Downs, president of Downs Glass in Sarasota, Fla., says retrofits, in particular, in residential projects present tough challenges for glass installers. “You have all these [unit] owners who want to make sure their glass is installed correctly,” Downs says. “Every unit you go into, you have a new construction manager. If you’ve got an office tower, the building owner doesn’t generally care. They just want the windows in and the job completed.”

Mark Meshulam, executive vice president for Builders Architectural Products in Deerfield, Ill., says glaziers can save time and effort by only working with one entity: for example, in new construction, just the developer, and in renovation, just the condo association. Builders Architectural dedicates about 75 percent of its business to residential condo or loft projects.

“You don’t want to have a free-for-all where all the different condo owners are specifying different types of glass, for example,” Meshulam says.

Glaziers also can prepare for large-scale residential projects by having resources including workers, equipment and replacement units, available on a rapid basis.

“You might get a call from a developer in a panic, because before a unit owner closes, they might require a replacement for any reason: the hardware is too hard to operate, the caulk is too visible,” Meshulam says. “You won’t have this as often in commercial projects.”