Lightweight Building Materials Deliver Benefits to Customers

By Anna Lockhart.  

USG sees a brighter future by designing with productivity in mind and realizing the benefits of lightweight roofing materials and their impact on workers’ safety and sustainability. 

USG engineers building materials with superior strength, performance and sustainability in mind. With over 120 years of experience in manufacturing, USG has made a major impact with its high-performing Securock® Brand Roof Board portfolio. 

In an episode of Roofing Road Trips, Heidi J. Ellsworth discussed the innovation behind USG products with Dr. “Vas” Srinivas Veeramasuneni, CTO of USG Corporation, and Derrick Hutchinson, director of sales for USG Roofing, and how their lightweight technology gives users the advantage of superior design while also delivering on multiple benefits - from productivity to sustainability. 

Dr. Vas explained why USG decided to pursue such designs, “In the last decade, we focused on the lightweight technology platform. People may ask why that's a focus. Because we want to make sure the materials that we are supplying to our customers are easy to install, easy to handle, and more importantly, we want to help them to increase the speed of installation and improve their efficiency.”  And along this journey, USG has seen a correlation between lightweight innovation and sustainability; removing weight also reduces water use, energy use during manufacturing and ultimately fossil fuel used during transportation. 

“USG has the largest cover board portfolio in the industry. With our portfolio, we are focused in on productivity, and delivering that to the contractors.” Derrick explained further as to why focusing on removing weight was a key factor in the design of USG Securock® Brand UltraLight Glass-Mat Roof Boards. “Diving a little bit more into that lightweight part of it, our lightweight cover boards are 18% lighter than the competitive products. What they do is they allow the crew to work safer, faster and drive efficiently on the job site. In addition, we can fit more products on a truck. So, with that, it's less trucks on site, less crane time, less time unloading the product.”  

A reliable brand for over a century, USG manufactures building products that are easy to work with while offering high performance and sustainability benefits.

Learn more about USG Securock® Brand Roof Boards in its Coffee Shop Directory, or visit usg.com/roofcoverboard. 

Listen to the entire conversation to hear more about USG’s history of innovation and commitment to making contractor’s lives easier.