How Commercial Damage Restoration Services Keep Operations Running
As a business or property owner, you need to keep operations going. After all, keeping your doors open affects your pocket and your staff, vendors, and patrons who rely on you for your services. When damage occurs, whether due to a fire, mold infestation, or something else, prompt commercial damage restoration services can keep your operations running so you experience minimal downtime.
This blog will explore what commercial damage restoration services include and why a company like BluSky should be your first call for mold, fire, water, or storm damage.
Immediate Response and Assessment
Ensuring your and your team’s safety is paramount after a natural weather disaster like a hurricane or tornado. The same is true for any issue that calls for quality damage restoration.
Take water damage, for example. On the surface, it may not look like a big deal or require immediate action. However, mold can develop in as little as 24-48 hours after exposure to water damage. Unless you can pinpoint exactly how long you’ve had the water damage, it’s likely that by the time a professional comes out, the mold has already spread. If untreated long enough, mold can lead to serious illness for you, your staff, and your customers and can also result in significant financial costs for restoration and potential legal liabilities.
Any damage, no matter how seemingly minor, demands immediate response and assessment. When you engage a commercial damage restoration professional, you can be assured that they will act swiftly, understanding the urgency and necessity of the situation.
Upon arrival at your business, the team will first conduct a safety check. Then, an assessment of the damage will determine the severity and equipment needed to correct the problem. Photos and videos for your insurance company will be taken because, yes, you will be filing a claim. Last, they will secure the site to ensure that it is not accessed by anyone who could be harmed by entering the premises.
A prompt commercial damage restoration response ensures the safety of your building and everyone there, highlighting the importance of hiring a restoration company that prioritizes swift response time.
Emergency Services
There’s no such thing as waiting when it comes to emergencies. Whether you’re dealing with mold or a burst pipe out of control, you need someone on your property, and you need them there fast.
Bottom line: The sooner you tend to damage, the easier it is to contain it. Here’s an overview of the most common forms of emergency restoration services a professional handles:
Water Damage Restoration
Water damage is one of the most severe forms of damage your commercial property can suffer because it can come from many different sources. For example, if you live in a state prone to flooding, such as Florida, Louisiana, or New Jersey, you may be dealing with Category 3 water damage. This type of water damage is usually highly contaminated with toxic and pathogenic materials that can cause significant health issues, including those that affect your gastrointestinal and respiratory systems.
Or, you may be dealing with a burst pipe. Depending on the pipe size, burst pipes can dispense anywhere from 210 – 3,400 gallons of water per minute! In other words, you could be dealing with internal flooding that damages your floors and everything in its path within minutes.
The water damage restoration process has many steps, starting with extracting the water, then drying/dehumidifying the area to grab excess moisture from the air, and wrapping up final repairs and deep sanitization. Depending on the extent of the damage, this could take a few days to a few weeks.
Fire Damage Restoration
Fires can break out seemingly out of nowhere and cause significant damage quickly. Unfortunately, restaurants, apartment buildings, manufacturing facilities, and hotels have the highest risk of fire damage, accumulating over $8 billion worth of property loss damages per year.
Loss of income excluded, fires can put everyone inside the building and nearby in harm’s way, even after the fire is extinguished. After a fire, your building will likely suffer extreme structural damage, so beams and floorboards may be at risk of collapse. Even inhaling smoke can cause significant respiratory damage. All of this points to the importance of getting a professional to come to your property and start repairs.
The fire damage restoration process starts by boarding up the building and taking other necessary precautions to secure the site. This prevents others from getting in and protects you in terms of liability. Then, your damage restoration tech will assess the damage, including structural issues, residual odors, and the amount of soot.
Though this is one of the more laborious forms of commercial damage restoration, fast treatment can prevent the damage from worsening.
Mold Remediation
Of course, there’s mold remediation. Of all the types of commercial damage on this list, mold is one of the trickiest to deal with because if not treated properly the first time, it can keep coming back.
As briefly mentioned above, mold forms after water damage. A lot of commercial businesses and property owners don’t realize this until after it happens, but because water is used to put out a fire and the existence of extreme temperatures, you’ll likely need mold remediation after fire damage restoration, too.
Since there are thousands of species of mold, your technicians will first assess the damage to determine what kind of mold it is, which will help them develop a plan of action. Then, they’ll use various devices, including but not limited to air scrubbers, air movers, and dehumidifiers. Each serves a different purpose, including removing mold spores from the air, eliminating moisture in the air, and increasing airflow to decrease humidity, which promotes mold growth.
Mold remediation ends by thoroughly sanitizing the area that was affected and making repairs to damaged items. The good news is that this process is quite efficient and should wrap up in a few days.
Efficient Restoration Process
The last entry brings us to our next point: hiring a professional to provide commercial damage restoration services can help you complete the repairs you need on a tight deadline.
In other words, you won’t have to wonder when you can re-open your doors, and your staff won’t have to wonder how long they’ll be out of work. But what kinds of repairs? Here are the top three repairs that are common with commercial damage restoration:
Structural Repairs
As briefly mentioned, under fire damage restoration, your commercial building may have downed beams, cracks in the concrete floor, damaged floors/roofs, and so much more. While water damage and mold damage, if left untreated long enough, can cause structural issues, these types of structural repairs are going to be more common with fires, floods, tornadoes, and hurricanes.
For example, after fire damage, you may need your doors and insulation replaced, gas pipes and electrical systems repaired, and your building’s framing fixed. Your building’s framing makes it a building, meaning its fast repair is integral to getting your doors opened and returning to business. Repairing the frame might include the rafters, bridging, subfloor, window sill, and so much more.
Contents Restoration
The next repair your technician will make concerns contents restoration. This is exactly how it sounds: it refers to the deep cleaning of anything damaged by smoke, water, and mold.
This contents restoration process could include cleaning and sanitizing curtains, carpets, and bed linens for apartment building owners and hotels. For retailers, it may include clothes, fine china, artwork, bookcases, and fabric furniture. Schools and office buildings could consist of desks, fax machines, and books, and for restaurateurs, it could include leather booths, televisions, tables, and stereos.
After being cleaned, each item is thoroughly inspected to ensure it has been fully restored and is safe to use inside the building.
Specialized Cleaning
While contents restoration can fall under the category of specialized cleaning, in this context, it refers to the cleaning methods used to treat each type of damage.
Depending on the damage your building suffered, your restoration team will use various items and techniques not limited to ozone and deodorization treatments, cleaning agents specifically designed to treat mold spores, high-pressure air-washing, and HEPA vacuums.
These types of cleaning equipment and methods go much deeper than simply cleaning the surface of anything in the room. After all, with water, smoke, and mold damage affecting your health so easily, removing even the tiniest mold spore or smoke droplet is critical to safeguarding your health and the health of everyone who works with you.
Minimizing Downtime
One of the most significant benefits of hiring a commercial damage restoration service is that it minimizes operational downtime.
Without the help of a service that handles all types of commercial damage, you could be dealing with a wide range of frustrations, from vendor delays to insurance companies not getting back to you promptly and everything in between. Plus, you’re likely stressed having to close your doors, wondering what kind of expense is coming.
Hiring a professional can remove this stress from your shoulders and offer rapid response restoration services so you can start the process soon after you make the call. This includes helping you take inventory of what’s damaged and ensuring the health of everyone who works there (which, by proxy, helps protect your reputation within the community). These things can help you file claims with the insurance company and lessen the impact on your bottom line.
Compliance with Regulations
Last but not least, hiring a professional will ensure that your business is complying with regulations.
As a commercial building owner, more responsibility and expectation rests on your shoulders regarding complying with local safety regulations and building codes than with homeowners. Because of this, you should look for a certified restoration team to assess and treat these common types of commercial damage. Look for certifications from HAAG Education, BOMA International, Indoor Air Quality Association, Institute For Inspection, Cleaning And Restoration Certification, and Property & Liability Resource Bureau.
Adhering to regulations will make it easier to file a claim with your insurance company and give you peace of mind that your restoration team is working on a tight deadline and making quality repairs.
Call BluSky For All Your Commercial Damage Restoration Services!
At BluSky, our team not only possesses the knowledge and experience provided by the organizations mentioned above, but we will also work on a tight schedule to ensure that your building can resume operations as soon as possible.
Our team is here to help restore your building after it suffers water, mold, and fire damage. We have experience working with all sorts of industries throughout the United States. We’ve helped offices, apartment buildings, hotels, retail stores, and law offices nationwide with quality commercial damage restoration.
Contact us today at 800-266-5677 to schedule the services you need. At BluSky, we understand what’s at stake. We’ll fix your broken building.