People in curtainwall have a hard time explaining what we do for work. “I engineer the outside of buildings” is close, but it leaves out most of what is going on behind the glass.

Watch a timelapse of unitized curtainwall going up on a high-rise. Panels show up on trucks as finished units - glass, framing, gaskets, and insulation already assembled - get craned up, and hook onto the structure one floor at a time. That only works because somebody engineered every step of it.

The job breaks down into a few things:

On top of that is the paperwork that keeps construction moving: calculations, shop drawings, submittal reviews, field fixes, and sealed record documents. On a lot of projects KEG is the facade engineer of record, meaning the engineer in responsible charge of the cladding’s structural integrity.

Short version: a facade engineer makes sure the skin of the building holds up to everything the weather and the maintenance crew throw at it, and that it is properly attached to the structure behind it. More on our facade services here.