Trim runs 25 to 40% of total panel cost on a typical IMP or ACM job, and it's almost never drawn as an area. It shows up as a length of line on an elevation, if it shows up at all, which is exactly why two bids built off the same panel schedule can land tens of thousands of dollars apart. The panels themselves are the smallest pricing risk on the job. Everything below is the linear-foot work, and the interface points where cladding stops being your problem and becomes someone else's.
How much trim is on the elevations?
Read the panel schedule for area first; that part is straightforward. Then read every elevation a second time, this time for trim, closures and corner conditions measured in linear feet, because that's where the 25-40% lives. A complete cladding takeoff owns:
- Insulated metal wall panels, complete — the full IMP system per the panel schedule and elevations: panels, clips, sub-girts, trims, closures, and inside and outside corners. "Complete" is the word that matters; the panels are the smallest risk on this list.
- Composite and ACM panel systems — rainscreen assemblies and their sub-framing across every drawn extent, including feature bands, canopy fascia and column covers. These hide in places a quick elevation read skips: a fascia return, a column wrap two sheets from the main panel schedule.
- Metal siding and liner panels — profiled steel siding and interior liner panels with matching trims, priced as one system rather than panel and trim as two separate lines.
- System flashings and trims — every flashing, closure and transition belonging to the panel system itself. Worth its own bullet because it's the item most bids under-price.
- Delegated panel engineering — stamped shop drawings and attachment engineering wherever the spec requires them. Real design time and real schedule, not paperwork behind the submittal.
Two things complicate the count. Soffits and canopies show up on building elevations, on reflected ceiling plans, and sometimes only on a detail sheet nobody cross-references against the panel schedule — the area is rarely the problem, the access is. A soffit thirty feet up on a canopy changes the equipment and productivity assumptions behind the labour rate even when the panel spec matches the wall system below it, so extract it as its own line with its own access note rather than folding it into the wall-panel quantity. And girt work beyond the panel system has no fixed home: some tenders push secondary girt framing (the steel that exists to carry cladding rather than the building's primary structure) onto this trade, some leave it with steel, and it can change clause to clause within the same document. Read the assignment language exactly as written — girt steel you don't owe is as costly as girt steel you're missing.
Who owns the flashing at every interface?
Three exclusions look obvious until the flashing gets involved:
- Primary structure and heavy girts belong to steel, full stop. Record the boundary as the documents draw it, not where it sat on the last job.
- Windows, curtain wall and entrances belong to glazing. The window itself is an easy exclusion; the flashing where your panel meets it is not automatically glazing's just because the window is.
- Roofing panels and membranes belong to roofing, including metal roofing, unless the documents expressly assign it to cladding. A standing-seam roof panel and a metal wall panel can look identical on an elevation and still be two trades' work.
The interfaces worth reconciling before you price:
| Trade | What to reconcile |
|---|---|
| Steel | Girt alignment and tolerances, plus support steel for feature elements like canopies and column covers. |
| Glazing | Interface flashings and air-barrier continuity at every window and curtain-wall edge — confirmed per opening, not assumed once for the whole elevation. |
| Roofing | Parapet caps and roof-to-wall transitions, where a shared detail can be drawn once but priced by two trades. |
| Waterproofing | Air and vapour barrier tie-ins behind the panels — confirm who laps onto whose membrane, and who seals the tie-in itself. |
What's buried in the finish and lead-time language?
Four clauses that live outside the panel schedule entirely, and change the price when they're missed:
- Air and water performance requirements. Air-barrier continuity duties, required testing, and hygrothermal or effective-R language usually sit on the wall type or wall-section detail, not the cladding spec section — and continuity duties mean your scope doesn't stop at the panel face.
- Finish warranties and colour. Coating system, colour count and custom-colour lead time are commercial terms as much as technical ones. Oil-canning acceptance language — how much visible waviness in a flat panel counts as a defect — is a dispute waiting to happen if it isn't settled before the panels are ordered.
- Field-cut and touch-up restrictions. Limits on field-cutting factory-finished panels, and the touch-up method allowed at cut edges, decide shop-cut-to-length versus field-cut-and-touch-up: a real cost and schedule fork, usually buried in one sentence of the finish requirements.
- Panel lead times. IMP and ACM panels are shop-fabricated to order. Check the stated project milestones against the panel order date this bid implies.
None of this shows up if you stop at the panel schedule. Read the elevations twice, name an owner for every flashing, and check the finish language before the panels get ordered.