Derek all I can say is do your market research VERY carefully before even spending £1 on fire & flood training!
In this thread, quite a few good arguments have already been made against an independent trader going after the work.
1) The market has shrunk in recent years, particularly on minor flood work (builders been given the work even though they make an ar$e of it). This means the same number of companies going for less work makes the market much more competitive and has driven prices down to peanuts.
2) Insurance companies DO NOT want to scrat around for local guys in every corner of the land. They want a "one stop shop" i.e. a national franchise. One point of contact, one pricing structure, and a nationally agreed level of service which is the same whether their end customers are in Cornwall, Hull or Inverness. The feedback of management info (MI) is critical so they need it all coming form the same source, i.e. the work done for them rather then them spending ££ on paying their own staff countless man hours rounding up independent companies all over the place.
3) The out of hours element of the work stinks sometimes.
4) You need to have a small army of staff on hand at a moments notice but you also need to not have to pay them for the 95% of the time because you don't need them. Tricky but manageable if you know enough people who are normally, how should I put it, not normally in employment
Doing it legit will cripple you financially, doing it under the radar will mean your personal drawings disappearing in cash. Lesser of two evils needs to be adopted, all things considered.
5) At times you can get treated like Baldrick by both the insurers and the end customers.
However having said all that, there are still reasons to go into the market but you would probably need to invest heavily. No half-hearted attempts... you couldn't just buy a couple of dehums and start advertising the service.
I think JK gave a very good talk on the subject at the last CCDO
I would question whether it would be worth the risk, to be honest. The only real market must surely be the "self insured" retail chains etc (as mentioned above) who wouldn't bother making a claim but find someone local themselves to deal with the odd flood etc. Most of those would be pocket change jobs though.
If anyone thinks I'm talking bullocks I'll stand corrected, but that's my take on the situation having been in close contact with the the restoration market for many years
