working for himself and being an entrepreneur. The downside of that, however, was the bulk of their work was taking place in a four-month period from May to August, because that’s when people moved. Paul was interested in doing work year-round, which meant branching out. “There was a long transition period,” he recalls. “It probably took me about five-to-seven years to transition from residential work to commercial work, which is what we focus on now. And the beauty of commercial work, it’s 12 months a year, year round. So there is always a flow of work for us.” Today, Westrade Construction projects can vary widely in terms of square footage and value. On the smaller side, they are willing to work to do service calls for existing clients. On the larger side, the biggest job they have done to date was a 40,000-square-foot conversion of an old Zellers store into a new commercial building, which now serves as a sales outlet to the military. According to Paul, clients of that calibre tend to choose Westrade Construction for three reasons: number one, their quality, number two, their transparency, and number three, their reliability. He says reason number three is particularly vital. “We do everything we can to deliver the project on time,” he says. “That’s extremely important for the client. If they give us a schedule, we meet it.” “Sometimes there are setbacks, there are unforeseen issues, but we work through those,” he adds. “For example, if a job specifies a particular vac system, but that system has a long lead time, we would go to our suppliers or our subs and try AUGUST 2024
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