Description: Extreme wind events, such as tropical cyclones, are a serious concern for building owners and property insurers worldwide. While codes and AHJs address many key issues related to building construction, with few exceptions, there is much more focus on life safety than property protection.

Property insurers must balance their engineering costs with loss costs to provide cost effective insurance. Property owners can choose to accept the premise that loss from wind events is inevitable and transfer the risk at prevailing insurance rates or take a resilient approach that effectively protects property damage and business impact. The focus must be limited to construction features most likely to fail during a hurricane. For industrial, institutional, and commercial buildings; this includes perimeter roof edge flashing, roof coverings and roof decks, wall cladding, windows, and roof mounted equipment. For several reasons, building framework rarely fails and it is seldom cost effective for an insurer to invest significant engineering costs to analyze it.

In this presentation we will address why cost effective, property protection wind design concerns are justified vs. just meeting minimum code requirements. We will also address common mistakes designers make in designing and constructing the building envelope.