It’s three o’clock in the morning, and after tossing and turning through a stormy night, Mr. Bright, the director of facilities for the headquarters of a high profile federal agency, had finally passed into deep sleep. Now he’s abruptly awakened by the bedside telephone. “Bright, we have a problem!” the excited voice booms. “I’m down here outside the headquarters, and we’ve got giant sheets of rubber all over the street. Looks like there are a couple dozen cars covered—hope no bodies. And there are piles of dirty, green stuff all over the place. And, would you believe, it looks like a thousand slabs of foam are flying around in the air. You’d best come down and take a look—I’m not sure, but I think your entire roof just blew off!”
No, it doesn’t look like a wonderful night for Mr. Bright, but be relieved that this is only a fictional scenario to illustrate how a true story might have ended. The story is about the “almost installation” of a vegetative roof on a two-million-square-foot government headquarters building, and it serves as a lead-in for a discussion of critical issues in design of vegetative roofs.