Wolgast Restoration Blog Page

Contents are a substantial part of a property insurance loss.  Not only the cost of replacing, but also an owner’s emotional attachment to items can be significant.  Being able to clean or salvage 80% or so of a building’s or house’s contents after a flood or fire is beneficial to reducing the loss for the owner.  Years ago, insurers didn’t think it was worth taking the time or effort to clean the contents, but with modern practices and equipment, the quicker turn-around time and success has proven to save on restoration costs.¹

Content cleaning is a job of precision for dedicated and compassionate technicians to restore another’s personal items.  We’re one of the few Restoration Companies in Michigan to provide this service in-house with an Ultrasonic Machine.  Our Employee-Owner Cleaning Technicians are well trained with the knowledge of the right process, temperature, PH levels, and settings for the Ultrasonic Machine to really get into the cracks and crevices of the items being sanitized.  The machine uses sound waves and water to also remove soot and rust from many types of materials.  We’ve been able to restore old style floor grates from older houses that are hard to find for replacement and we can also use the Ultrasonic Machine to clean ceiling diffusers that are impacted by restaurant fires.  Its versatility and ability to remove difficult to reach dirt from tiny crevices of knick knacks and other intricate or hard to clean items really surprises our clients.  Recently, we were able restore a widow’s collection of old hand tools that had been her husband’s.  She’d suffered a fire loss at her home and the Ultrasonic machine had the precious items looking better than they had in a long time.

Secondly, we offer the Ozone Generator that uses O₃ to take out the smells associated with smoke damage or other unpleasant odors.  Restoration companies that have their own content cleaning staff and equipment can deodorize many items that wouldn’t be expected to be restored.  As part of our Content Cleaning Service, we have trained professionals in house to run the equipment and see that impacted materials are cleaned effectively and safely to be returned to the insureds home or place of business, toxin free.  Additionally, we’re able to use the Ozone Generator on site, which speeds up the restoration process and gets business owners back in business faster.

1 https://www.propertycasualty360.com/2014/07/01/the-perils-of-pack-outs/. “The Perils of Packouts”, 7/1/14.

Wolgast Restoration has added technology to make their service even more efficient. The Matterport 3D Camera is a high resolution scanning device that lets us take 3D photos to turn into a high quality, precise, 360 degree, walk-through, interactive image online. The qualities and capabilities of the scan have many benefits that are useful to Insurance Companies, including quicker estimating and more efficient management of restoration activities. By scanning a building interior with the camera on an initial site visit, we can use the software’s capabilities to do follow-up measurements or verification if needed, get additional/outside input via email without subsequent site visits, and keep high-quality documentation of the state of the property.

Speed is everything in the restoration business and we continually invest in technology and equipment to better serve our mutual clients in order to get them back to a pre-loss state as quickly as possible.  The time saving aspects of the Matterport camera allows us to take on more claims in a shorter time frame, which is beneficial during a wide spread loss in our coverage area. 

If you’d like to know more or have a client that needs our expertise, please call us today.

Help your clients find us in their time of need at 855-WOLGAST

The insurance restoration industry is filled with franchised, nationwide companies.  They have come with an established name and a network of connections.  However, based on our experience as a general contractor reconstructing structures after they were damaged, we saw there were areas for time savings to get our clients in their buildings or homes faster.  Being independent gives us more flexibility to tailor our service to each unique situation.  Furthermore, being systemized, employee-owned, and having an experienced construction crew on our team, we provide many benefits to quickly mitigate, clean, and restore your property following a disaster, getting our mutual clients in their building faster and the restoration project closed earlier.

As we started planning for our restoration division, we had to face the barriers associated with being a start-up and an independent contractor.  However, we had many things already going for us to enter into the industry and enough exposure through our previous reconstruction projects to know how we’d like to change things in our market to set us apart from our competitors.  First off, we were already a systemized company and could apply the same planning to create a seamless flow from our restoration services to our construction services and streamline the process, making it quicker for residential or business owners to get back into their home or building. 

Also, we are an employee-owned company which leads to many advantages for attracting quality staff and also to provide an elevated level of customer service.  Our employee ownership program makes each staff member vested in the success of the project, so they will make you look good in the eyes of our mutual customer.  We have 130 staff members, giving us the ability to do much of our work in house, and to accommodate large loss projects easily.  Additionally, being paired with a construction company gives us ready access to back hoes and two-ton dump trucks which can make work move along quicker.

Additionally, we had the flexibility to add services that aren’t common among many restoration companies.  Those include content cleaning, storage, and re-construction.  We have two storage warehouses to take on multiple content storage projects, if needed, and our construction division has almost 70 years of experience in commercial and residential buildings, with the ability to design and rebuild damaged structures.  Over the past 69 years, Wolgast has done its fair share of reconstruction after a fire, vehicle impact, or flooding.  We could see that there were delays that prevented us from starting our work as we waited for paperwork to be filed and the project to be handed to us to start construction, based on an additional company being introduced to the mix.  Now, by being on the same team, communication with the insurance company can take place earlier, plans can be drawn, materials can be ordered, contractors reserved, and the process can run more smoothly to get our customers in their building quicker.

We are interested in being added to your approved vendors list.  Please contact us for information, 888-WOLGAST.  This is also our 24-Hour hotline for emergency calls, should your client need our services in an emergency.

Outsourcing Your Content Recovery and Processing

In many property restoration situations, content restoring is one of the critical parts of the process.  However, not every restoration company or general contractor offers it as a service.  Most include mitigation, board-ups, and cleaning, or alternatively just reconstruction, which are also critical parts.  For those companies that don’t offer the content processing service, they can outsource it to companies like Wolgast Restoration to remove the items, clean and deodorize them, and store them via an inventory system in a large, climate controlled, secure and dry location.

Oftentimes, the bulk of the heartache of a disaster isn’t the loss of the structure, but more so the loss of keepsakes and other valuable items.  Using a content processing crew that is trained by IICRC can help to clean and deodorize a wide range of items that may otherwise be mistaken as ruined.  We surprise our clients quite often with the rare items that we can restore to pre-disaster condition.   For instance, one of our customers had an antler mount on a cream colored base that was stained with smoke and soot and thought to be a total loss, but through our IICRC training and equipment, we were able to restore the base and the antlers to their pre-disaster condition, much to the client’s surprise.  Additionally, we were able to salvage a large part of a different customer’s massive baseball collection after a fire in his home.  He not only had over 200,000 baseball cards, but also newspaper clippings, books and other valuable memorabilia.  Needless-to-say, the customer was concerned about the inventory and keeping track of the items that were most valuable, regardless of salvaging or not.  We were able to assess everything, salvage a large portion and satisfactorily establish his comfort with our system to keep his collection intact for his review. 

In addition to sanitizing, we keep inventory of all items in our care.  We use a barcode tracking system to inventory and process contents, so at any time during our care, we know what items have been cleaned, what items still need to be cleaned, and where an item is in our warehouse (which vault).  Additionally, we have adequate storage/vaults to take on a loss of any size and we carefully pack-up all items for storage then keep them secure until it’s time to return to their owner.

Adjusters, restoration companies, general contractors or building owners can contact us at 855-WOLGAST, for our content processing services.  We can also be contacted at that same number 24-hours a day to provide restoration services, mitigation through reconstruction, if necessary.

Contents restoration is a very complex and painstaking process.

Not long ago, contents restoration management was a much more complex and painstaking process. Restoration contractors had no efficient method to inventory property on-site. Damage documentation and property tagging had to be hand-written for each and every item. This error-prone process slowed down the contents processing time, delayed the property restoration, minimized the number of claims that could be processed by the restoration contractor, and negatively impacted customer satisfaction.

Due to the high number of property contents that have to be recovered and moved through the many levels of a restoration operation, handling the logistics of it all was a daunting task. Even the smallest of errors could have a profound impact on the restoration project. We took a thorough evaluation of the demands of contents restoration and the importance of the details within the steps required to produce happy adjusters and satisfied customers. And unlike most of our competitors, we determined that the status quo just wasn’t good enough to meet the high customer service standards of our company, and decided to invest in technology to make the contents restoration process faster and more efficient.

That’s why today, Wolgast Restoration uses iCat contents management technology to identify, catalog, and track contents throughout the entire restoration process.

iCat technology for faster, more efficient contents restoration.

Faster Pack-outs:

iCat is a highly sophisticated bar coding, cataloging, and tracking system that reduces our content processing time by as much as 50%. By utilizing Cloud and Mobile Technologies, the iCat system allows us to handle high volume pack-out jobs faster than ever before, with greater accuracy.

We can move, track, clean, estimate, report, and conduct any operational tasks instantly via a web browser or mobile device. This gives us complete inventory and management control, and total transparency of the status of the project.

Each item is tagged with a bar code and scanned into the system. The integrated voice-to-text technology provides faster item description and damage notations. Digital photos are taken of each bar coded item, then immediately uploaded into the electronic file for that item.

The system allows us to match each item with the room it was originally located in to ensure it is returned to the same room after the restoration has been completed. This saves time and eliminates frustration for the customer when unpacking the items.

After scanning and photographing the items, they are packed according to the following criteria:

• Cleaning Process Required
• Category (material, nature, and durability)
• Soil Level
• Room/Location

The items are safely packed into an appropriate size box. The box is then bar coded and given a description and room identification before it is loaded into the box truck to be transported to the contents processing location.

Peace of Mind:

Our Adjuster and insured customers can review and track the progress of a claim through the easy-to-use iCat interactive web portal that provides transparency, ensuring confidence and peace of mind. Enabling customers to view the progress of their claim not only answers any questions they might have, but also puts their mind at ease and makes life a lot easier for the adjuster. When the insured is able to see what’s happening to their valuable possessions, they will less likely need to bother the insurance adjuster with phone calls regarding the status of their property. This level of transparency and ease of access to their contents is a bonus for insureds. If a customer needs access to specific item during the restoration process, we are able to quickly look up the location of that item in the iCat system and provide the necessary access to the customer.

By using the iCat Contents Management System, Wolgast Restoration can ensure a connected and collaborative experience for all parties involved in the claims process. It raises confidence that each claim we process will go smoothly, and that we will deliver a quality, consistent product every time. That’s disaster response and recovery the Wolgast Way.