Keep 150 Days of Rain Outside — Building Envelope Engineering in Seattle
Curtain walls, cladding, and waterproofing engineered for a city that gets 150 days of rain a year. Norquist designs, tests, and verifies the details that keep the weather where it belongs — outside.
Skins We've Engineered
Office towers, multifamily recladdings, institutional glass — every facade here went through the same discipline: designed, tested, verified.
We Only Do the Envelope. That's the Point.
Most firms treat the facade as a line item between structure and interiors. Norquist treats it as the whole job — because on Puget Sound, the envelope is where buildings succeed or fail. Fourteen years, one discipline: how water, air, heat, and light move through a wall. Our engineers hang off the buildings they assess, spray-test the details they draw, and sign what they seal.
- ✓Licensed PEs who do their own fieldwork
- ✓Design-side and forensic-side experience
- ✓Details contractors price with confidence
Every Layer of the Envelope
From new curtain wall design to the leak nobody can find — tell us the building and we'll tell you where to start.
Survey. Test. Detail. Verify.
The same discipline whether it's a new tower or a sixty-year-old leak — evidence first, drawings second, verification always.
Survey & Document
We put eyes — and often ropes — on every elevation, and document the envelope as built, not as drawn.
Test & Diagnose
Spray racks, smoke pencils, and moisture mapping isolate the actual failure path before anyone opens a wall.
Detail & Specify
Repair and design details drawn at buildable scale, with specs contractors can price without padding.
Verify in the Field
Mockup reviews and installation testing confirm the built wall performs like the drawn one — before closeout.
Water Always Finds the Lazy Detail.
Thirty-seven inches of rain a year doesn't destroy buildings — unresolved transitions do. The window-to-wall joint nobody drew. The parapet cap that relies on caulk. Norquist exists for those two centimeters of the building where most of its lawsuits are born.
- ✓Leak investigations with documented failure paths
- ✓Repairs designed to the actual cause, not the symptom
- ✓Litigation-grade reporting when it comes to that
Why Our Walls Stay Dry
01We Test, Not Guess
Every diagnosis is backed by field measurement — moisture mapping, spray testing, thermal imaging — so the repair targets the real failure, the first time.
02Details Drawn to Build
Our details come from people who watch them get installed. If a sequence doesn't work with gloves on at sixty feet, it doesn't leave our office.
03Verified at Closeout
We field-test the installed wall against the design intent — so the building you accept is the building we engineered.
Every Engagement Gets
Sealed PE Deliverables
Every report, detail, and spec carries a Washington PE stamp — and the professional liability that stands behind it.
Field Testing to AAMA Standards
Water and air infiltration testing run to recognized field protocols, documented so results hold up to any reviewer.
Thermal Bridging Analysis
Envelope assemblies modeled for real heat flow — not catalog U-values — so energy code approval doesn't stall the permit.
Buildable Specifications
Scope language contractors can price tight, sequenced for occupied buildings when tenants are staying put.
Asked Before the First Site Visit
Do you work for owners, architects, or contractors?
All three — on different projects. Owners hire us for assessments, leaks, and recladdings; architects for facade design and energy modeling; contractors for mockup and field testing. On any single project we're clear about who we represent.
What does a facade condition assessment cost?
It scales with elevation count and access. A mid-rise visual survey with a drone runs a few thousand dollars; a full rope-access assessment with intrusive openings on a high-rise is a bigger, phased number. We scope it after a document review and a walk-around — that first look is free.
Can you test an occupied building without disturbing tenants?
Yes — most of our field testing happens on occupied buildings. Spray testing is staged elevation by elevation with notice to affected floors, and interior verification is scheduled around tenant hours. Nobody's workday should end because we found a leak.
What if the test doesn't reproduce the leak?
That's information too — it eliminates a failure path and narrows the search. We escalate methodically: more water, higher pressure differential, adjacent details. Leaks that only appear in a south-westerly with wind-driven rain get tested like it.
Our building is from the 1980s. Reclad or keep repairing?
That's a math question, and we'll show the math: remaining service life of the existing system, repair spend rate, energy penalty, and the capital cost of overcladding versus full replacement. Sometimes the answer is 'ten more years of maintenance' — we'll say so.
Do you handle the permit and energy code side of a recladding?
Yes. Recladding triggers current energy code, and that's where projects stall. We model the proposed assembly, run the compliance path, and sit in the plan-review meetings until the permit clears.
Talk to a Facade Engineer This Week.
Send the building's age, cladding type, and what triggered the call — an engineer replies within one business day with a first read and next steps.
Tell Us About the Building
Age, cladding type, and what triggered the call — that's all we need to give you a first read.