Commercial fire damage restoration: phasing a commercial fire damage loss around a business that has to reopen

How commercial fire damage restoration works

1. Secure, and get a partial reopening plan on day one. Board up, tarp and isolate utilities, then ask immediately which part of the building could trade first. A phased reopening is usually possible and is worth designing before the cleaning starts, because the order the work is done in is the difference between reopening a third of the floor in three weeks and all of it in ten.
2. Inventory and triage the stock and equipment. Contents on a commercial loss are stock, plant, records and IT, and each has a different route. Electronics and machinery are treated early because soot corrodes contacts while it sits. Stock is usually a total loss once smoke reaches it. Records may be restorable by a specialist, and are often the thing the business actually cannot replace.
3. Clean and deodorise around occupied zones. Where part of the building trades on, work areas are contained and put under negative pressure, and the mechanical system serving them is isolated so residue is not redistributed into the trading area. Out of hours working costs more and is usually cheaper than the trading it protects.
4. Reinstate to a specification, not to a memory. Commercial reinstatement runs into current building and fire regulations, accessibility, and whatever the lease requires, which sometimes means the rebuild cannot be like for like. Establish that early with the landlord and the insurer, because discovering it at fit out stage is a delay nobody has budgeted.

Business interruption and the lease

Fire is covered on commercial property policies, so the money questions are business interruption and the lease. Interruption cover runs on the reinstatement programme and usually has an indemnity period that starts running immediately, which makes delay in agreeing scope expensive in a way that is invisible on the building claim. The lease decides who reinstates and who insures, and it is worth reading before the first contractor is instructed.

Common questions

How quickly can a business reopen after a fire?

Part of it often within weeks if a phased plan is made early, the whole of it usually months. The variable that moves most is how quickly scope is agreed, because contractors cannot programme work that is still being argued over.

Does business interruption cover start straight away?

The indemnity period generally starts at the loss and runs for a fixed term regardless of how long the rebuild takes, which is why delay is so costly. Notify the interruption claim at the same time as the property claim rather than afterwards.

Can we keep trading during commercial fire damage restoration?

Frequently yes, in contained zones with isolated ventilation and out of hours working. What makes it possible is planning the phasing before cleaning starts, and what makes it impossible is usually the mechanical system rather than the fire.

Who is responsible, the landlord or the tenant?

The lease decides, and the answer differs for the structure, the fit out and the contents. Read the insuring and reinstatement covenants before instructing anybody, because acting first and reading later is how a tenant ends up paying for a landlord's obligation.

What do fire damage cleaners actually do on a commercial loss?

They take the soot off before it etches and corrodes, in the order that stops it being spread. On a commercial building that work is phased around the parts of the operation that have to reopen first, which is what the programme is for.

Is residential fire damage restoration run differently from commercial?

The cleaning is the same and the programme is not. A house is emptied and worked through; a business is phased around what has to reopen first, and that sequencing rather than the technique is what the commercial price buys.

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