Largest Building in Maryland Roofed by Johns Manville

The former Bethlehem Steel manufacturing site at Tradepoint St. John’s is getting new life in a modern building as a distribution center for a clothing manufacturer. Proximity to rail, land and water makes this location ideal for global companies to expedite both their shipping and receiving operations.

After more than a century of production, the site is now classified as “brown” due to decades of contaminants from steel manufacturing seeping into the soil. That leaves the foundation that the building is sitting on, composed of slag--waste from steel manufacturing, susceptible to movement. The architect required 9” seismic expansion joints to address any issues. Further, to provide optimal working space inside the new building, the design called for many skylights. The building owners also required that one vendor warranty both the roof and the skylights.

Orndorff & Spaid recommended a Johns Manville roof with VELUX skylights. The project required 13,000 squares of white JM TPO 60 mil membrane over two layers of 2.5” ENRGY 3® Polyisocyanurate mechanically fastened. The roof is ENERGY STAR® Certified, earned the LEED® Silver Certification and is FM insured. JM sales representative Melissa Duvall credits the collaboration of the three major players with the success of Orndorff & Spaid finishing before the deadline. Weekly on-site visits by a JM project manager kept the materials flowing to get the roof completed first. Then the holes were cut for the skylights.

With the experience Orndorff & Spaid brought to the project, the installation of 276 4’ x 8’ skylights was completed by two crews of ten handling 20 to 25 skylights a day, with the project manager bringing in more workers as needed to keep on schedule. Logistics Lighting provided 276 skylights to enhance the 400,000 square feet of the plant where visual tasks will be performed. “I’ve worked with JM before but this is our biggest project to-date. The VELUX Dynamic Dome Skylight was a great choice for this amazing facility and we are proud to be the supplier for this landmark project,” said Eric Huffman, Logistics Lighting President. The sidewalls of the Dynamic Domes have been engineered to closely match the angles of the early morning and late afternoon sun in order to harvest more sunlight to transfer indoors. “We refer to that as Optimum Daylight Harvesting and this design performs beautifully,” Huffman added.

Orndorff & Spaid did not only bring this project in on budget, they completed the job early. Vice President of Estimating Richard Harville was impressed with the teamwork by all involved. “Johns Manville did a first-rate job for us. They not only bring the best products to the table, but they bring the best price. Thanks to the efforts of the entire team, we were able to beat the deadline to finish,” stated Harville.