Jeremy Mean and Jason St. Thomas built Century Exteriors into a 120-person, three-province building-envelope contractor — not by chasing every product on the market, but by betting hard on a single system the rest of Atlantic Canada’s roofing market had mostly ignored.
When Jason St. Thomas joined Century Exteriors to build its roofing division, the decision about which system to install was almost immediate. Torch-on two-ply mod-bit — the method that dominates New Brunswick’s commercial roofing market — was off the table. The reason was partly about fire risk, partly about speed. But in a region where labour is the binding constraint on almost every construction project, the most important reason was headcount. A single-ply crew of four or five can cover more than 5,000 square feet in a day. The company had a simpler way of putting it: “we don't need 10 guys to go into a roof we only need four to five due to the system”.
That arithmetic is the thread running through the Century Exteriors story. In an Atlantic Canada market that has been squeezing contractors on school tenders, struggling to keep crews employed year-round, and watching experienced subcontractors age out, the company’s answer has been to make every decision — product selection, union membership, workforce structure — a labour decision first.
Jeremy Mean started Century in Woodstock, New Brunswick, after learning the building-envelope trade at Vic West under Paul Fournier, then spotting the gap left by aging cladding subcontractors exiting the market. He began doing install work directly and built from there. Today the company runs drafting, CNC fabrication of ACM panels and subframing, cladding, and roofing from its Woodstock head office, with operations in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. Staff count sits around 120.
Pick one system and build real expertise
Century entered roofing exclusively with Carlisle EPDM and TPO membranes, distributed in Atlantic Canada through Arrow Construction Products. The decision wasn’t just tactical — it was structural. By refusing to offer torch-on at all, the team had to become genuinely competent at single-ply rather than spreading attention across formats. As Jason put it: “we weren't using torch — that's not even an option for us right”.
The advantages compound. No open flame means fewer site restrictions and fewer insurance complications. Installation speed means a smaller crew can take on larger roofs. And Carlisle’s total-system warranty — 20 to 35 years, non-prorated, backed by a manufacturer inspection at job completion — becomes a sales tool rather than just a spec requirement. The warranty premium is priced explicitly: “it's like 10 cents or 30 cents a square foot for this total system warranty”. Shifting the conversation to lifetime cost rather than sticker price is how Century wins jobs on value instead of price.
Architects who resist re-specifying products often cite the work of re-detailing. The Century approach is to remove that friction entirely: “you don't have to do that — Carlisle web page they have all the details, all the CAD files”. Once a specifier understands that, the resistance tends to evaporate.
New Brunswick’s commercial roofing market is still dominated by four established players — Flynn, ATEC, Atlantic Roofing, and Enviro Roofing — mostly doing two-ply on government specs. Century isn’t trying to out-muscle them on their own turf. The bet is that the flameless shift already common in the US and central Canada is coming to Atlantic Canada, and that a company already building genuine expertise now will be better positioned when it does.
Join the union when you already exceed their standards
In January 2023, Century joined the Atlantic Canada Regional Council of Carpenters (part of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America). The reasoning was not what outsiders might expect. Jeremy had been paying his crews above union scale before the transition, with health benefits and profit-sharing already in place. The union hadn’t approached Century precisely because the pay was already good: “we never approached you because you pay your guys good right so I paid better than the union”.
What the union offered wasn’t higher wages — it was infrastructure. Training programs, access to the Las Vegas building-envelope courses, and a benefits administration system that Century would otherwise have had to build from scratch. The company also built its own in-house training with animated instructional videos and practice walls. For a specialty trade where certified training paths are scarce, developing your own curriculum is the only reliable path to supply.
Cross-train the crews and work twelve months, not eight
The most direct answer to the Atlantic Canada labour shortage in this episode is also the most practical. Century cross-trains its cladding and roofing crews so they can shift between scopes as the season and the project schedule demand. The result: “now we're working 12 months a year instead of eight or nine”.
That change in employment length is a retention tool. Tradespeople who know they’ll have work through the winter don’t need to hedge by keeping one foot elsewhere. It also creates flexibility on the project side — if a roofing scope starts while cladding is still running, the same pool of trained workers can move between them without the company needing to source a separate subcontract crew.
The broader logic is about growth ceiling. When you’re constrained by labour supply in a single trade, you hit a headcount wall that can’t be solved by winning more work. Diversifying into an adjacent trade — cladding to roofing, or later, roofing to glazing — gives the business a larger addressable labour pool without requiring specialists in a market where specialists are scarce. Jeremy put the math plainly: “it's easier to diversify and be you know 300 — divide that out and have a hundred hundred hundred”.
The two-year job: early engagement on large projects
Century is cladding the Canard development on Halifax’s waterfront with Southwest Properties and doing an $8M+ building-envelope project in Newfoundland with Marco Group — Atlantic Canada’s largest general contractor. The Newfoundland job came after roughly two years of pre-award engagement: working through budgets and construction details with the GC before the tender was issued. Jeremy described the timeline: “I think it was like a two-year process even before being awarded the job”.
That kind of early engagement is how large complex jobs actually get awarded on the specialty subcontractor side. By the time a tender is formally issued, the relationship, the details, and the approach have already been stress-tested. The award is a confirmation, not a competition.
The flip side is knowing which work to avoid. Schools have become a consistent margin trap — government specs, tight budgets, and the kind of price competition that strips out anything that differentiates a quality contractor. Jeremy was direct about it: “schools have not been uh great for anybody”. Century has largely stepped back from that market.
The misfits who are flourishing
Jason’s description of his roofing crew is the kind of honest insight that rarely makes it into a company’s marketing materials. Several of the people who joined the roofing division came from situations where they’d been labelled difficult or problematic elsewhere. In Century’s environment — clear expectations, fair treatment, year-round employment — the same people are performing. As Jason described it: “they were a problem somewhere else and they're in an environment now they're flourishing”.
The practical lesson is about hiring from a wider pool than your competitors do. If you’re only recruiting people with a clean record at every prior employer, you’re competing for the same narrow slice of available labour that everyone else is fighting over.
Jeremy’s operating principle on market relationships is worth naming plainly. When you’re entering a market where established players already have the government spec contracts, the instinct to undercut can backfire badly: “we're not out there to make enemies — you step on someone's toes and it's gonna come back and bite you”.
When a GC on a job site has a problem outside Century’s scope, Jeremy’s instinct is to help anyway: “give me let me make a few phone calls let me see if I can find you something”. That kind of goodwill is the business development play that never shows up on a bid sheet but earns the design-build call two years later.
Who is building with Century
Century Exteriors’ client list reflects the company’s positioning at the top end of the Atlantic Canada building-envelope market. Marco Group — the region’s largest general contractor, running commercial, healthcare, multi-residential, and P3 work across Atlantic Canada — is the GC on the Newfoundland cladding project. Southwest Properties develops and manages more than 1,860 rental apartments and condominiums concentrated in downtown and waterfront Halifax; Century is doing the cladding on Southwest’s Canard building. Arrow Construction Products is the select Atlantic Canada distributor for Carlisle SynTec roofing systems and Century’s materials partner for the single-ply work.
Those relationships reflect a deliberate positioning: Century isn’t competing on price with whoever will torch on the next school roof. It’s building the reputation of a building-envelope company that complex-project GCs call early.
The aspirations for where Century goes from here include glazing — which would complete a full building-envelope capability — and expansion into Ontario, where the company has already started pricing work and sent representatives to Niagara. The company has also hired seven international engineering graduates as office staff to address the office talent constraint. Not every labour problem in construction is on the tools.
Guests: Jeremy Mean, Founder & President, and Jason St. Thomas, Roofing Director — Century Exteriors Inc. (LinkedIn). Featured on Episode 60 of the Atlantic Construction Podcast. Watch the full episode. Also featured: Marco Group, Southwest Properties, Arrow Construction Products.