Johns Manville

General Contractor:

Nations Roof Central

Scope Of Work

Description: A late spring hailstorm swept through Oklahoma City, causing severe damage to the
500,000-square-foot roof of this popular shopping destination. Assessments by both the insurance carrier and
roof consultant, Benchmark Inc., determined that a complete new roof system would be required to protect the
mall’s 180 retail tenants.
Challenges: “Hailstorms are numerous around here,” reported Benchmark’s Doug Henkel. “The mall wanted
a roof that would withstand the impact of these powerful storms and the large hailstones. It needed a system
with built-in resiliency, and one that could perform repeatedly for many years.”
Solution: “We specified a multilayered gravel-surfaced asphaltic system from Johns Manville,” continued
Henkel. The reliability of a built-up roofing system enhanced by the redundancy of multiple plies of roofing felts
offered the performance benefits the mall owners required.“Despite the substantial logistics of installing over
a live, functional mall, we agreed with Benchmark’s solution,” said Don Hamilton, Penn Square’s director of
operations.
“At its peak, we had 80 people at the job site,” commented Todd Wheeler of Nations Roof. “We kept two
tankers, each holding 30 tons of asphalt, on the ground and four crews at four locations on the roof. Tear-off and
re-roof over retail spaces took place after close of business and before stores reopened the following morning.”

“Communication was key to the project’s success,” said Hamilton. “The secret was letting folks know what to
expect and when. Both Benchmark’s and Nations Roof’s on-site project managers provided daily status reports
and their plans for the next two to three days, This freed me up to focus on our tenants and keep them informed
when work was going to be going on overhead.”
The job started in May and finished in just ten months. “This was quite an accomplishment when re-roofing
one of the biggest and busiest malls in the state,” commented Wheeler. According to Henkel, “Soon after
completion of this job another storm came through and caused cosmetic damage to the metal roofs, but the
built-up roof withstood it in good order.”