Vancouver, BC
Glass & Cladding / Architectural Metal
Back pans, brake-shaped sheet metal, packaging, tagging and sorting to customer spec, fast and complete tender pricing
Supplying a Vancouver glazing contractor from a shop outside Calgary, where a missing or incorrect part means a trip back to Alberta
Complete orders packed, tagged and sorted to Bothwell’s specifications, with pricing returned quickly enough to meet tender deadlines
Back pans and brake-shaped metal supplied for a 10-storey building, with no late deliveries or quality issues reported across roughly a dozen jobs
OVERVIEW
Bothwell Accurate is a building envelope contractor that does roofing, cladding, glazing and waterproofing, and it has operated in Ontario for nearly a century. It entered BC in 2017 by acquiring Glass Tech, a Vancouver glazing business that has operated since 1985. Bothwell’s shop has its own brakes, shears and CNC equipment for simpler sheet metal and buys out the rest.
On 2150 Keith Drive, a 10-storey mass timber office building in Vancouver, Bothwell bought all of the back pans and much of the brake-shaped sheet metal behind the façade from GMP.
CHALLENGE
GMP’s shop sits outside Calgary, nearly 1,000 km and a mountain range from Bothwell’s shop in the Vancouver area, so if a back pan is missing or a part needs to change, the fix is a trip back to Alberta rather than a drive across town.
Bothwell’s shop manager named the distance himself as the one real cost of working with GMP. Bothwell’s glazing division also works to tender deadlines, and a bid cannot go out until the sheet metal has been priced, so GMP’s pricing has to come back quickly as well as complete.
SOLUTION
Bothwell sends GMP a short email with the sizes, a description and the system the metal is going into, and GMP returns a quote that covers everything requested in time for the tender. For most of its sheet metal, GMP is the only supplier Bothwell prices with.
On the shop side, GMP packs orders to Bothwell’s requirements, whether that means packing the material a particular way, tagging it a particular way or sorting it into a particular sequence. This costs extra, and on a supply line this long it keeps a short shipment from becoming a schedule problem.
GMP’s production equipment also helps keep its pricing competitive, since its automated cell cuts and bends sheet metal and that capacity shows in both the quote and the lead time.
On a separate Bothwell job, GMP put holes in flat sheet before cutting and forming a run of steel corner brackets for curtain wall framing, a sequence Bothwell’s own shop could not run, and Bothwell has used those brackets for a year and a half without having to drill them in-house.
Back pans and brake-shaped sheet metal: Supplied for a 10-storey office building from a shop nearly 1,000 km away.
Packaging, tagging and sorting to spec: Shipments prepared the way the receiving shop wants them, so parts arrive complete and in usable order.
Fast, complete tender pricing: Quotes returned in time for the deadline, covering everything asked for.
Outcome
2150 Keith Drive was completed in 2025 with GMP’s back pans and brake-shaped metal in place. In 2026, the project won an award with the Vancouver Regional Construction Association (VRCA) as well as a nation-wide award with the glass supplier, Guardian Glass.
Across roughly a dozen jobs with GMP, Bothwell’s shop manager Sam Parsa has had no late deliveries, quality problems or mid-job failures, which is why Bothwell keeps sending this work to Calgary instead of to a supplier closer to its shop.
Bothwell is open about the fact that the market is pushing hard on upfront price and that the cheapest supplier looks more appealing across the industry, but its position is that a cheaper part costs more over the life of a project once rework, site quality control and warranty replacements are counted. Both its sales side and its shop floor call GMP their go-to supplier.
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