Water leakage through building walls continues to be the single largest cause for construction litigation in new buildings. Litigation is all too often a long, tedious, expensive and unpredictable venture for owners and building managers.

The litigation process often delays repair efforts which can exacerbate damage to finishes and building content, and, more importantly, the structure of the wall assembly. Loss of use of the workspace inevitably creates tensions and economic issues between managers/owners and the tenants that occupy their buildings.

As investigative and design consultants, we see the same types of problems from project to project. The root of most water penetration problems is the lack of integration and coordination between the waterproofing elements of the various components within wall assemblies. This problem exists within the “gray” areas or transition spaces where one building element or wall assembly (such as a window or glass/metal curtain wall) terminates and another building element (such as a masonry wall) begins. Although these transition areas constitute a relatively small surface area of the building wall, they cause the bulk of wall leakage problems.