Prefabrication and Induction Welding Roofing Technology

According to Duro-last " Contractors have always struggled with ever-changing weather, scheduling, temperature-sensitive materials, and labor—even under the best of conditions. The single-ply roofing industry responded by introducing prefabricated membranes. This allowed many roofing companies to reduce the crew size that they had grown accustomed to when installing traditional bituminous roofing materials. Typical thermoplastic roofing job site and crew.

 Prefabricated roofing membrane panels further reduce the linear footage of field seams and the required seam labor by as much as 80%. Yet, these consistent factory-fabricated membranes solved only part the problem. Without the redundancy of the built-up roof, the demand for skilled labor at the critical areas of the rooftop—penetrations, walls, drainage  details, seams, and perimeters—has come into sharper focus. High-quality detail work has emerged as one of the most important aspects of any roofing operation. For this reason, most single-ply roofing manufacturers offer at least a few prefabricated items. It is not uncommon, for example, to see pre-made corners and pipe flashings on single-ply job sites  This is true for both thermoplastic (PVC and TPO) and elastomeric roofingsystems (EPDM)."

 Further, "In recent years, several thermoplastic membrane manufacturers have incorporated induction welding into their mechanically fastened roof systems (Figures 7 and 8). This technology allows the roof membrane to be welded to underlying plates that are clad with chemically compatible thermo-plastic coatings.
In light of today’s labor shortages, roofers using induction welding (Figure 9) as a method of thermoplastic membrane attachment have reported increased productivity while simultaneously delivering improved roof system performance".