Shawn O'Hara: My guest today is Ray Brougham, who is the president and CEO of Rainhouse Manufacturing Canada Limited, which is a leading CNC machining and contract manufacturing company based in Victoria, BC. If you're wondering, CNC stands for Computer Numerical Control. It refers to a manufacturing process where computers control machine tools like mills, lathes, routers, and laser cutters to shape materials with high precision. Ray began his career as a Red Seal journeyman millwright before earning a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Victoria. Since founding Rainhouse in 2001, Ray has grown the company to serve major clients in defense, technology, and medical sectors. He is also recognized for his active involvement in community development and supporting the next generation of engineers.

Well, welcome Ray. I thought we could start off by you telling me about Rainhouse Manufacturing and a bit more about what you do.

Ray Brougham: Alright, well thanks for having me on, Shawn. We're a BC-based manufacturing company, and our core services are CNC machining, electronics manufacturing services, design and development testing, and procurement and contract manufacturing. Our tagline is "From Idea to Done," because for many larger companies that just want to parse off a certain amount of work and not have to worry about it, we’re a one-button-to-push solution. That’s where we add value.

Shawn O'Hara: Okay. And where do your customers come from?

Ray Brougham: A fair bit is from defense. We're pretty involved with the Victoria Inservice support contract for the Canadian submarines. We also work in the medical industry for companies like Kardium, a Vancouver-based company that's developing heart surgery equipment. We work in the marine industry a lot because we're here on the West Coast, and we do some research work.

It just depends on cycles. Right now we're kind of at a slow point in that area, but we're really looking at growth in defense and the marine industry for sure. We just got into aerospace work. I guess we'll talk about that later, but that's a new emerging market for us.

Shawn O'Hara: Neat. Yeah, I took a tour of your facility. It was very impressive. So what made you get into this?

Ray Brougham: Really good question. I came here from the wood products industry, and my goal was to get an engineering degree so I could go back to that industry and be an expert. I was working as a maintenance superintendent in a sawmill. We were doing the largest sawmill in North America, in Houston, BC.

I was working with a lot of engineers, and I really liked the work they were doing, so I thought, I think I'll just quit my job and go back to school and get an engineering degree. At the time, my target was Russia. I thought Russia does a terrible job of wood products, pulp, and paper, so I'd be valuable out there. Turns out that wasn't a good idea, as I found out later. Now I'm in Victoria, I can't get a job, so what did I do? I started a business. That was in the middle of doing a master's degree in mechanical engineering, and the business won. I ended up doing something very interesting, working with a company called Redlen Technologies.

I built a whole facility with them. Most of the equipment that they use today was built by Rainhouse Manufacturing, so I'm super proud of that because they are owned by Canon. It's a huge company and they make world-class detectors for gamma ray and x-ray detection, especially in the CT scan market.

Shawn O'Hara: Fascinating. What do you love about all of this and building things? What drives you?

Ray Brougham: We make things matter for people. We work with customers more as partners. We love to see things come off paper and become real. Many times, we're just making parts and everybody here is curious, like, what does this fit into? What does that end product look like and how much of it is what we did?

It's exciting to see people realize their dreams because they’re not manufacturers. We offer design for manufacturing services, and that just means, how can we make this more cost-effective and robust for your application? That doesn't happen in every case, but when it does, it's really neat to be able to help. For example, we helped a company develop a bomb bay for a drone—not for what you think, but for preventing avalanches by knocking them down before they hurt people. That was very interesting work.

Shawn O'Hara: It’s the small piece of the big picture. I saw a chart once that had a list, I think it was for an astronaut, showing how many millions of people were involved in getting that one person on the moon, and everything that they did. It was pretty amazing.

What are the core values of Rainhouse?

Ray Brougham: Integrity, definitely. We like to do the right thing and make it matter for our customers. Excellence, obviously, is a constant process of improvement. Currently, I'm working with Anders Nielsen and we’re starting the Vancouver Island Manufacturing Excellence Alliance. It's all based on constant improvement, and we’re both experts in different areas. Anders is an expert in lean processes. I think I'm an expert in collaboration and getting people to work together. So, I think it's a great combination, especially given the times we're in. That's the first two core values: accountability and transparent communication.

We’re very customer-focused, and we love to have long-term relationships. We've got customers who have been with us since the inception of the company, and that's a testament to how we partner. And of course, community. We are pretty involved with the community, especially with the University of Victoria. We run an engineering showcase. Put it in your calendar: April 2nd, 2026, we'll be at the Pearkes Arena and we’re going to have a huge event that will definitely get people aware. What we are trying to do is raise awareness about manufacturing and engineering and show that we can do this in Victoria. It's fun, right? Because we get to build rockets, satellites, robots, all kinds of things that our bright young minds are putting together. We get to be part of that. So, amazing!

Shawn O'Hara: That's April 2nd, 2026.

Ray Brougham: That's correct.

Shawn O'Hara: So that's larger than last year's, then, if you're going to Pearkes.

Ray Brougham: Yeah, we are repositioning the event because we wanted to get more involvement. We sponsor 12 engineering teams at UVic. We were doing something with the Fix-It Robot teams, grade school teams, and we were talking to UVic, our partner, about how we could make this bigger. They said, well, if we move this from September to April, then we can have all the Capstone projects. So in addition to everything we do, we'll have 16 Capstone projects being showcased.

So it's a little bit different. The Capstones are for marks. All the other teams are competing around the world. Some of the robot teams have traveled to China, Australia, the United States, and they have many great stories about that. But they never get to compete in their own town and this is great. Their friends and family can come. It's kind of a friendly competition across a whole bunch of different areas, and employers are there. I think it's a great way to grow the manufacturing sector in Victoria and on Vancouver Island.

Shawn O'Hara: Neat. Yeah, that'll be huge, and being at Pearkes Arena, it will be much more open to the public.

Ray Brougham: Yeah, we just booked the event. It's that field house. It's a huge building. I don't know if you've ever been there, but I think it's got half a dozen tennis courts in it under one roof. It’s a massive facility, which will be just about right for what we need.

Shawn O'Hara: Okay. Excellent, and I'm glad you mentioned VIMEA. Do you want to touch on that and what's happening?

Ray Brougham: We're getting a lot of interest. There are the structural things that have to be done. I’m in the process of forming a society. We've had some very good discussions with the South Island Prosperity Program to help us get this off the ground. We're trying to put together half a dozen companies that really want to push hard on this idea and generate some success stories by making case studies and helping people understand what lean manufacturing is.

The best way to see it is not to dig into a book and learn about the 8 Wastes, 5S, and Kaizen. It's kind of boring. But when you can show people, “This is what we used to do. This is what we do now. This is the benefit. Our return on investment was X number of weeks,” then you can start to see that it's not that hard. That's what Anders is going to be doing. He's an expert in this area. He set this up in Ontario years ago with ABB, a huge company and all their partners. And today it is still going.

It's a testament to something that works and lasts a long time. I think it's around 30 years that this has been going on in Ontario, so I'd love to see that happen here. Not only is it helping people get lean in their manufacturing, but as you well know, our GDP per person is not good. This'll help that area.

I think the other side of it that's really subtle is we'll be working together, and we'll get to know each other. If you know people and companies, then you can start to think about partnering, and that's what we're good at. Every time we do that, we win. We punch above our weight and we look like a huge company when we're just 25 people.

So really, we're a tiny company competing in a global market now. If we could go on and on about the advantages, I think about tariffs and what that has done for us. It's motivating people to do things more efficiently and just go for the harder things that can really grow our economy.

So I'm excited. That's why Anders and I started VIMEA, and I think with Shawn J's help from the Sidney Breakfast Club, it kind of gave us a platform. I remember being on a panel and seeing the interest and sparkle in people's eyes going, yes, I think this is a great idea to get going.

We've got that initial push and I think, watch us for the next few months. We have a group on LinkedIn—search A-V-I-M-E-A and you'll get there pretty quick. I think we have 90 members currently signed up.

Shawn O'Hara: I'll put that in the show notes.

Ray Brougham: Great idea.

Shawn O'Hara: And then the Sidney Breakfast Club. There was a podcast that was done, so I'll—

Ray Brougham: Yeah.

Shawn O'Hara: And that's where we first met too, was in that—

Ray Brougham: Yeah, that's right.

Shawn O'Hara: So what kind of businesses are you looking for, for VIMEA?

Ray Brougham: A manufacturing business, and that could be pretty broad. We're talking to people like Nicholson Manufacturing, Vmac, just to name a couple. There's a huge scope here. I just had my vehicle wrapped with a paint protection film at a company called Renison.

If you want an example of a place that's set up lean, funny enough, his shop is like a hospital. It's clean, everything is organized, all the toolboxes are the same color. I just had my car wrapped and he says, bring it back in a week and I'll check it over and make sure everything's good.

So I parked the car outside and they backed out a car they'd just been working on, washed the floor under it—which was clean—and then drove my car in. That's the kind of thing you don't see often. I've been in lots of shops like that, and they're a mess. This place was beautiful.

So that's just an example of lean processes in every industry. We're going to concentrate on manufacturing, but we'd welcome Renison to our group any day because I'm sure he could help us, especially on the cosmetic side of things, getting things looking consistent, and making the customer experience better.

Shawn O'Hara: Neat. Lots of consistency. We'll certainly be following VIMEA and how that grows. So, Ray, with all of the tariffs that are happening in the current situation, which has been the incentive for you, do you see that, let's say, helping or becoming the silver lining?

Ray Brougham: Absolutely a silver lining. I equate it to the same sort of situation as we had with the pandemic, where we pulled together and figured out how to do things in a better way. I think we've been a little bit lazy and had an easy market with the United States, and things were very amicable. Now that we no longer have that relationship with that country, I just went to Ottawa for a big defense conference. There's a lot of talk about how we can work with the EU and other countries. We're going to send a couple of us to Mexico in the fall to partner with companies that have US suppliers, and now it's difficult for them to work with them. We're going to be a great alternative.

So I could see us having better ties with the EU and with countries like Mexico that are looking for ways around the problem. That's what entrepreneurial people do: they figure out how to get around a situation. In this case, I think it's going to be great for our country. It seems like everybody is on the same page, and that doesn't happen very often.

Shawn O'Hara: Yep. That's what I've noticed. And the push to do things locally, to buy locally, because for decades people have said it would really help if we bought locally, if we shopped locally. People have ignored that, and now the benefits to our economy are huge. So now there's a good incentive for—

Ray Brougham: Well, I think we have to be careful too, not to let our guard down because we said all those things during the pandemic and then nothing happened. So this is the more extreme situation for sure. It's the second time around, so, you know, fool me once, that's okay. Fool me twice, but if we do it three times, then we're just playing stupid.

I think we just have to get our act together. Canada should be the most prosperous country in the world. We have so many resources and we have so much that we could value-add. I know it's difficult because we're a small population, but we’ve got to figure it out now with AI and all kinds of tools—robotics, automation, all those things can help us do better. I hear we're just going to start manufacturing beer cans in Canada. That should have been happening before, just like we should have been making masks and vaccines during the pandemic. We had those indicators that we should be doing things differently. So hopefully we're learning from history and we're going to do better.

Shawn O'Hara: Maybe a difference is that during the pandemic and the lockdown, we started to do this, but we wanted to go back to 2019. We wanted to go back to the way things were. So when that opportunity arose, that's what we did. Now we can't go back and we don't want to go back. We have that damaged relationship, so now we’re forced to expand. It's kind of like the boats have been burned and we've got to keep going.

Ray Brougham: Going back is not always the best solution. You have to think a little bit further ahead and be more strategic. Think five years ahead or ten years ahead: what is this going to look like? I think we've learned all the lessons. At least I have. So hopefully I can get people on board with this kind of thinking, and I'm not the only one.

So hopefully this becomes more visible and more of an opportunity that really needs to be capitalized on. It's not just for money; it's for community. How do we live in this world? We can't do anything about the big things that are happening over us, but what we need to do is build a great foundation. I encourage people to do what you can in your community to make your community stronger. If a whole bunch of communities do that, now it's a whole city, then it's a whole province, and then it's a whole country.

Nothing happens—like, it doesn't matter what the government says, nothing happens unless that base is there. That's how we do our little part here. That's how, personally, I approach this in my life: do what you can and don't worry about the things you can't change. Be aware and then see what you can do at your level to make Canada a stronger country.

Shawn O'Hara: That's fantastic. And make this a better—

Ray Brougham: Yeah, it is. It's a fantastic place. I've heard that everybody says that they live in the best place in the world. I'm going to say it too. I had a choice where I was going to live and I picked Victoria because I think it's a great place. Vancouver Island, BC—I've lived all over BC and traveled it extensively.

I used to have my own plane. I thought I was going to be a commercial pilot once, so I've seen a lot of this province and all of Canada, really. It's an amazing country.

Shawn O'Hara: Yes, I've been here 34 years and I've lived in various spots across the country and been all through—

Ray Brougham: Awesome. All right.

Shawn O'Hara: So that wraps us up. Any final thoughts, any final words?

Ray Brougham: Well, thanks for the opportunity for me to share. I hope people will reach out. If you're interested at all in what I'm doing with Shawn, terrific. And Anders Nielsen with VIMEA especially, reach out. We're going to respond and we hope to really make a difference where we can. Watch us.

Shawn O'Hara: What's the best way to reach you?

Ray Brougham: You could reach me by email at ray@rainhouse.com or follow the VIMEA group on LinkedIn. Join us there and we'll communicate that way.

Shawn O'Hara: Right. Thank you. And I'll put that in the show notes. Well, my guest today has been Ray Brougham from Rainhouse Manufacturing Canada Limited. Thank you, Ray.

Ray Brougham: Thank you, Shawn. Have a great day.

Shawn O'Hara: And that's a wrap.

• Rainhouse Manufacturing Canada Limited: www.Rainhouse.com
• 532 William Street, Victoria, B.C. V9A 3Y9
• VIMEA: Vancouver Island Manufacturing Excellence Alliance on LinkedIn