No matter how big the job or how small, the contents pros have protocols in place to make the assignment go smoothly.

You may recall the article in which we told of the contents manager who was faced with a ten story building and had never tackled so many floors before.

He shared his concerns with the company owner who said, “Can you handle just one floor?”

The manager said, “Absolutely.”

His boss said, “Do that 10 times.”

Since then there was another case in which a well- staffed restoration company was faced with smoke damage in a large mall. The shopping center had just come out of a COVID mandated shut down, and now, 5 days later, smoke odors and contamination threatened the livelihoods of the store owners.

The structural team went to work extracting smoke odors and drying things out. Along with the contents pros they managed to keep two thirds of the mall up and running, but the building’s fire sprinkler system had really damaged the stock of various stores.

In point of fact, the contents pros had to inventory, pack out, clean and restore over 1,000,000 items from a single retailer… while restoring the valuables of several other shops as well.

Both the structural workers and the contents specialists had to deal with the store owner’s individual insurance companies, the shop managers, mall owners and personnel, so communication was (as it is on every job) key to the overall success of the assignment.

Meticulous records were kept and the contents team’s managers held the lines of communication wide open.

So how does a contents restoration team deal with a dozen stores with wet inventory when many have different insurance companies? They do the same thing a dozen times.

“Getting the doors open” is of paramount importance in such cases, because each day the doors of an establishment are closed, the owners are losing significant sums.

For these cases, we create 8-hour shifts and work around the clock 24-7. That’s what this team did.

In this instance, the restoration company owner was able to say that the mall management and the store managers were deeply grateful, “They mentioned it was impossible to tell there had ever been any damage and that many of their stores looked even better than before the fire.”