A UNIQUIN Customer Success Story - West Bank HQ

Craig Loff of Elite Glass & Metal in Johnston, Iowa, was brought into the West Bank headquarters project early — early enough to work from the architectural renderings and shape what the client actually needed.

West Bank wanted individual offices, but without giving up the open view across the floor. This customer success story follows how the UNIQUIN demountable interior glass wall system met both at once.

My name is Craig Loff. I'm one of the main principals and owners at Elite Glass & Metal in Johnston, Iowa. We were fortunate enough on the West Bank project to be brought in early, and what that means is we got to look at the architectural renderings, the concepts of what the client really needed.

This project probably had a little bit more of a challenge because of the interstate traffic. In this particular job West Bank wanted individual offices, but they wanted to make sure people had this open view. So yes, it makes it a little challenging — you're trying to control noise, but you want an open environment.

I'm Jason Moner. I work for Elite Glass & Metal; I am the job site foreman. The first thing I noticed right out of the box: the material, it's a good solid extrusion. It is a step above any other systems that I've worked with.

Another thing that I do like about the dormakaba system is the glass pockets themselves are deep, which allows for more forgiveness on your glass sizes. And just from an overall installation standpoint, I did appreciate that dormakaba does a very good job doing an online video showing the installation. So then we bring our foreman in, we discuss it, we watch the videos.

I would say dormakaba separates themselves a little bit more on their very high end. They want to make sure we're installing their product to their specifications, and I would say they do an excellent job doing them.

The UNIQUIN product — what separated this for West Bank was the demountable partition part in the spec. That's a big deal for different clients looking for tax credits, for depreciation of value like furniture. So the UNIQUIN product was really the driving force behind it.

One thing that I pay close attention to as a foreman is the morale of the crew, and when we received this product — the packaging, the ease of installation — it all lent itself to a high quality project. There was a lot of technical support by dormakaba, and I would say the installation was seamless. I couldn't have been happier.

They understand the value for the end customer. It's not just Elite Glass — this is for West Bank, and they recognize that right from the very beginning.

I've been fortunate enough at Elite Glass to be able to work with dormakaba for a number of years on a lot of projects, so I've seen the transformation of it throughout. The UNIQUIN was the new Cadillac product for dormakaba, and I would say they took it to a new level of realizing they wanted West Bank to be a signature job. I believe that the team collectively made that happen for the client.