Safety and the environment are driving change says Mark Harris, Head of Technical Services and Operations at Radmat Building Products, which is Headline Sponsor of the UK Roofing Awards 2020.
Radmat Building Products are delighted to become Headline Sponsors of the UK Roofing Awards 2020, an event that provides our industry with the opportunity to recognise best practice and excellence in all forms of roofing.
Since the Grenfell Tragedy and subsequent Hackitt report most sectors of the roofing market have and will be impacted by a number of factors, the changes in Building Regulations, far greater scrutiny by building control officers of proposed systems and the demand of insurers and clients to demonstrate compliance for each system through documentation and testing. Never before has our industry for both suppliers and installers seen a faster changing market.
Radmat Building Products welcome this long overdue review and reform. Increasing standards and awareness of the performance of materials herald a new chapter in the industry and the reverberations will be felt for many years to come and those companies not looking to innovate and adapt will struggle to compete.
The Roofing Awards provide us with the opportunity to celebrate and welcome innovation, and never has the flat roof been asked to work so hard or meet so many design challenges. Not only do all roofing systems have to meet the minimum legal requirements of the Building Regulations they are required to do so whilst providing ever greater thermal efficiency without impacting on other construction elements such as door thresholds and upstand heights.
The past decade has also seen increasing demand for all types of roofs to be used in the fight against our reliance on traditional forms of energy generation by utilizing the vast unencumbered space on the rooftops of the UK and either retrofit or incorporate into new developments photovoltaic panels. And with the cost reducing and performance increasing these will become commonplace on all schemes in the future.
During this time the London Plan has helped drive the increased share of green roofs, either for environmental, aesthetic or amenity benefit. Today over 40 per cent of all UK green roofs are installed in London, with the City of London having 5.82 m2 of green roof per person. With the establishment of new Mayor Offices around the UK, all of which are looking at the achievements of the London Plan, we can expect increased demand for Green Roof’s across the length and breadth of the UK in the years to come.
The latest need is for roofing systems to help manage the issues that climate change, increasing populations and hard landscaping have on rainwater management and subsequent flood risk. Correctly designed and installed Blue Roof’s provide a sustainable drainage solution that significantly contributes to the management of rainwater, particularly in cities where land is at a premium.
Radmat Building Products are at the forefront of all of these innovations in roofing, and during 2020 and beyond will be supplying many of these roofing systems on projects for household names such as Amazon, Facebook and Google.
Radmat Building Products brands include:
- ProTherm Quantum—the world’s thinnest certified inverted roof insulation
- MedO—biodiverse, sedum and inverted roof solutions
- Geocell—rooftop rainwater attenuation system
- PermaQuik—hot melt monolithic waterproofing
- EshaFlex—Reinforced Bitumen Membranes
- ParaFlex FD—cold applied liquid waterproofing
- EshaPlan—PVC single-ply membrane
