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Facade Consulting Services

Explore our expert facade consulting services to ensure long-lasting performance, thermal continuity, and code compliance for your building envelope

The facade is one of the most visible—and vulnerable—parts of a building. At Inspec, our facade consulting services help architects, developers, and building owners ensure long-lasting durability, performance, and beauty. We design with purpose and precision.

What Are Facade Consulting Services?

Facade consulting services include expert technical guidance for curtain walls, panel systems, rain screens, and specialty enclosures. We assist throughout design development, detailing, QA, and construction administration. Our consultants help bridge the gap between design intent and real-world performance.

In addition, we ensure thermal and moisture continuity and address constructability issues before they become costly problems. This proactive approach results in efficient, code-compliant, and high-performing façade systems.

Why Partner with a Façade Consultant?

  • Prevent air and water infiltration in complex facade systems
  • Improve thermal and moisture performance across all transitions
  • Enhance constructability and eliminate coordination gaps
  • Reduce change orders and long-term maintenance costs
  • Achieve energy code compliance

Our Facade Consulting Services Include:

  • Peer review during schematic and design development phases
  • Shop drawing, detail, and submittal reviews
  • ASTM testing of facade systems
  • Construction observation and field mockup evaluations
  • Failure analysis, repair design, and retrofit recommendations

For more facade performance guidance, visit the National Institute of Building Sciences.

Let’s Review Your Façade

Our consultants bring peace of mind through expert design guidance and on-site QA. Let’s ensure your facade performs beautifully and efficiently.

Further reading

From the technical library

Common questions

What is the difference between facade consulting and hiring a cladding contractor?
A contractor supplies and installs a facade system and carries responsibility for that scope. Inspec does neither. We are consulting engineers and architects retained by the owner or design team to evaluate systems, review submittals, observe construction and document conditions. Because we have no product or installation to sell, our recommendations follow the evidence rather than a preferred assembly.
When should a facade consultant be brought onto a project?
The earliest useful point is while the cladding approach is still open, before details are locked and materials are procured. Input during design and submittal review costs far less than changes during construction. That said, consultants are often engaged mid-construction or years into occupancy, and those engagements are equally common and equally productive.
Can you help decide between repairing and fully recladding a facade?
Yes. That decision needs evidence: the condition and remaining service life of the existing assembly, the pattern and cause of distress, access constraints, and how a repair sequence lines up with your capital plan. We investigate, document what we find, and present the options with their consequences so the ownership group can make the call.
Do you work on historic and older masonry buildings?
Facade consulting regularly involves older masonry, stone and terra cotta assemblies, which behave differently from modern drained and vented walls. Repair approaches that suit a contemporary cavity wall can trap moisture in a mass masonry wall. We assess the assembly as it was actually built before recommending any treatment or repair strategy.
What facade systems do you review?
We work with curtain wall, window wall and storefront glazing, rainscreen panel systems, brick and stone veneer, cavity and load-bearing masonry, precast concrete, terra cotta and other unit cladding, and adhered systems such as EIFS and stucco. We also review the transitions between them, which is where most facade problems begin.
Do you review the cladding contractor's shop drawings and submittals?
Yes. Shop drawing review is a core part of facade consulting. We look at anchor and gasket details, flashing and sealant submittals, thermal and structural calculations, and any proposed substitutions, then report where the submitted system departs from the design intent or from the details the project was priced on.
What happens during a facade mockup review?
We help define what the mockup must demonstrate, attend the build to observe workmanship and sequence, and witness air and water testing on the assembly. The accepted mockup then becomes the standard for production work. Documenting it carefully gives everyone a shared reference if installation quality is questioned later.
How is facade consulting different from envelope commissioning?
Facade consulting concentrates on the cladding and glazing systems themselves — their design, detailing, fabrication and installation. Envelope commissioning is a formal, whole-enclosure process with defined owner requirements, verification activities and reporting across roof, walls and below-grade elements. The two overlap on a project and are often carried out together.