The power of prefabrication

By Emma Peterson. 

How Kelly Roofing tackled wind, access and other project challenges with help from Duro-Last’s custom prefabrication. 

Meet Kelly Roofing, a Duro-Last Elite contractor and the winner of the 2024 Duro-Last Custom Fabrication Award. To dive further into the project that won the award, Megan Ellsworth hosted Joe Kelly, owner of Kelly Roofing, and Matt Jozwiak, one of Duro-Last's southwest Florida and Caribbean Islands representatives, for an episode of Stories from the Roof.  

Joe explained the background of the awards, sharing, “The award is Duro-Last's way of recognizing contractors that utilize their prefabricated roof system in difficult or unique projects/situation.” And a difficult situation is exactly what Kelly Roofing found themselves in when they started their Twin Dolphins project. Joe explained, “This was one of those projects that most roofers look at and tend to run for the hills, just about everything you can throw into a project. It was a high rise building right on the water, making it hard to access and creating challenging wind conditions. On the actual roof, there were many protrusions from things like AC units and drains. It was a proper challenge.”  

But it was a challenge that the Kelly Roofing team was able to rise to, thanks in part to the support from Duro-Last. Not only does Duro-Last offer prefabricated products that can be shipped directly to jobsites for efficiency and quality control, they also can support contractors in the planning phase. Matt explained, “Kelly Roofing was able to send over a diagram of the roof, and the Duro-Last engineering department helped them lay out the prefabricated panels strategically, managing all those complex penetrations and accounting for the wind codes in the fastening pattern.” Joe added, “It used to be if you wanted that kind of engineering, you needed to hire and pay for an engineer. But with Duro-Last, we basically get access to their engineering department for free through our partnership with them. That’s big.”  

At the end of the day, this project is not only a testament to the impressive skills and talent of the team at Kelly Roofing, but also the powerful partnership they have built with Duro-Last. 

Listen to the whole Stories from the Roof episode to learn more about Joe, Matt, Kelly Roofing and Duro-Last.