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Silver Lining
Recent Tornadoes Present Opportunities for Contractors

For the past few years, the building trades have been pummeled by the recession, with new-home construction at a virtual standstill. The scene has improved somewhat in the past year, mainly on the strength of home-remodeling projects, but Mother Nature has supplied an even bigger boost. Simply put, coming off a harsh winter that necessitated plenty of repair work across the Pioneer Valley, the destruction wrought by the June 1 tornadoes is giving the construction business a significant jump start.

Although new-home construction long ago slowed to a crawl in the Pioneer Valley, Roger Chapdelaine said, remodeling business has been on the rise for some time.

“ We’ve been doing a lot of work,” he said. “A lot of people are renovating; we have a lot of mid-range remodeling projects. The kitchen and bath business is very strong right now.”

And that was before a series of tornadoes tore through Greater Springfield on June 1, throwing hundreds of lives into turmoil and posing stark challenges to the region’s economy — but presenting a very large opportunity to those in the construction and restoration fields, who had already been seeing signs of life in a long-troubled industry.

“ The tornado work has definitely increased our total volume, from the standpoint of knockdowns and rebuilds and also repair work,” said Chapdelaine, president of Joseph Chapdelaine & Sons in East Longmeadow. “We’re trying to focus more on the full rebuilds right now, but it depends a lot on what our clients need. But definitely, the increase in the workload has been something.”

That’s a story being repeated throughout the construction sector.

“ I can’t tell you how busy we’ve been lately,” said Marybeth Bergeron, president of Charista Construction in East Longmeadow. “We’ve been in business since 1985, we have a good reputation, and we’re literally two blocks from East Forest Park, where the tornado hit the Hill McKnight section of Springfield. And we’ve done a lot of work in Wilbraham, too; our name is fairly well-known there.

“ This work will continue for a period of time,” she added. “Frankly, there’s so much work that not all of it will be done in the next few months. It’ll take a year to get everything back into condition. Some homeowners are being more cautious, and they’re taking their time to make sure the job is done right, and make sure the right people are doing the work for them.”
While general contractors saw their workload rise in the days and weeks following the storm, property-restoration businesses were answering the call within hours.

“ We probably handled more than 60 just emergency-type jobs — boardups, triage-type work,” said Joe Gillette, president of Complete Restoration Solutions in Chicopee. “We probably contracted for repairs on half of those, and we continue to get calls every day. People are still dealing with the damage.”

For a company more accustomed to responding to smaller emergencies — a house fire or localized flooding after a storm — the extent of the tornado damage posed a different set of challenges, Gillette said.

“ We generally get out there within an hour or two,” he said. “It was a little different with this storm, but we tried to keep up as best we could.”

The initial response, he explained, “ranged from boarding up windows and doors to tarping roofs to securing personal property and helping remove trees from roofs — everything you can think of to make it safe, make the property secure from any looters or further damage. Most of the major emergency stuff came within three or four days, but we got calls as late as last week.”

In this issue, BusinessWest spends some time with a few business owners with significantly less of it to spare these days — a silver lining for the construction industry amid a decidedly challenging time for the community as a whole.

On the Clock

Gary Brunelle, president of Ace Fire and Water Restoration in West Springfield, recalls working for 30 straight days after the tornado to deal with the flood of work requests coming in from homeowners and insurers.

“ We market in the insurance industry pretty heavily, and when people call their insurance agents and ask who they recommend and what they should do, we get people calling all the time,” he told BusinessWest.

“ We specialize in fire, water, wind, and mold, and that was a pretty good-sized windstorm, so we did get a steady stream of customers,” Brunelle added. “We did boardups and roof tarpings until June 18, so there were 17 days of what we call ‘emergency services.’ That includes sucking water out of people’s basements because the roof is gone, restoring power, and setting up demolition.”

If a property owner chooses to sign a rebuilding contract with Ace, the company negotiates a damage estimate with the insurer. “Then, because we’re general contractors, we come in and do the repair work that needs to be done.”
That has taken many forms lately, he said, from rebuilding two roofs in Wilbraham to rebuilding a house on Abbott Street in Springfield. “We’ve got one on Eastern Avenue where we’ll gut the interior and reframe some exterior walls, and redo the interior of the house.”

The uptick in business in Western Mass. echoes a similar phenomenon occurring elsewhere. The tornadoes that struck Alabama on April 27, destroying about 5,700 homes and businesses, have spurred a boom in construction following what had been a very weak year.

“ Business is picking up because of this and a lot of our members are swamped right now,” Lurenda Avery, spokeswoman for the Greater Birmingham Assoc. of Home Builders, told the Birmingham Business Journal.

The situation in Joplin, Mo., where a May 22 tornado killed 156 people and destroyed or damaged some 8,000 buildings, is somewhat different, as the focus has been on demolition and debris removal, with a massive rebuilding effort expected to boost construction afterward. But even now, companies that provide demolition, debris collection, dumping, and landfill services are experiencing a surge in business.

For example, the landfill in Galena, Kan., just a few miles from Joplin, had been run by one man with a loader, but the town has since contracted with Joplin-based Jordan Disposal Services to manage the landfill so that it could handle the influx of tornado debris. Thirty people now operate the landfill.

“ It’s a terrible thing that Joplin’s had to go through,” Galena Mayor Dale Oglesby told the Associated Press, “but a lot of people are going to have a job because of this. A lot of materials are going to be sold, and a lot of materials are going to be disposed of.”

Caution Flags

Clearly, large-scale disasters cultivate opportunities — and breed opportunism. One theme that has arisen repeatedly when talking to local contractors is the importance of hiring firms that are actually qualified to do the work (see related story, page 37).
“ I think, for reputable companies familiar with the remodeling and mitigation work, there’s ample opportunity,” Bergeron said.
The emphasis she put on ‘reputable’ firms echoes a caution issued by municipal officials and local leaders in the construction trades — including tree-removal specialists and roofers — about a wave of unlicensed workers who typically try to make a few bucks in the wake of a major storm or other disaster.

“ I believe the initial onslaught of out-of-state contractors who came in has somewhat dissipated,” Bergeron said. “The city of Springfield has done a fabulous job educating the public about the type of firms they should be hiring, about preferring local, reputable firms wirth licenses and insurance, about always checking referrals.”?
There’s a reason for such diligence, she said. “We are able to negotiate and substantiate damages that perhaps other contractors without our breadth of knowledge might miss,” she explained, adding that her firm becomes a sort of partner with a home or business owner during a very difficult time.

“ We work with insurance companies to make sure people get everything they’re entitled to under their policy,” she added. “Unfortunately, some people are willing to accept what the insurance company wants to give them without debate, and certainly there’s always room for debate when it comes to mitigation work. We’re finding that, as the weeks go by, people are discovering additional damages — windows with seal failures, small foundation cracks — that they didn’t realize initially, and we’re being called back to do supplemental claims for them.”

As Chapdelaine explained, the construction industry had been showing some signs of life already, with more homeowners opting for remodeling projects and many people still dealing with repairs of the ice damage sustained during the past harsh winter.

“ It’s been a crazy year,” he said. “Between the winter and the tornado, it’s created a lot of work. But people were already upgrading their homes and starting to spend money. So I’d rather focus on the positive instead of saying we have to rely on Mother Nature to be busy.”

Brunelle also noted that Ace had been plenty busy with winter-weather repairs. He pointed to color-coded folders in his office representing current jobs — red for fires, green for tornado-related projects, and so on. There are plenty of these green files about, but a large stack of blue files (representing water damage) as well. “Those are all winter repairs,” he said.
“ Some years are busier than others,” he added, “but this has been much more than we expected, for sure.”
Gillette agreed, noting that the company has been handling jobs in all cost ranges, and is busy hiring project managers and superintendents to keep up with the additional workload.

Chapdelaine also understands that urgency.

“ The downside,” he said, “is that we certainly can’t take all the work, and you hate to put people off. The tornado was harrowing enough.”

Excerpt from BusinessWest.com: www.businesswest.com

Basement Flooding
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Damage Control - Restoration Firm Has a Niche That Soots It Well
By George O’Brien, BusinessWest Magazine - October 28, 2008

Gary Brunelle knows that, unlike business owners in countless other lines of work, he can’t expect to build his enterprise on the strength of repeat business.

That’s because the commercial and residential restoration work he does follows a fire, flooding, strong-wind damage, sewage backup, or even a vehicle plowing into a home or storefront. In other words, calamities that usually — and hopefully — visit the homeowner or business owner once.

“There is a little repeat business,” said Brunelle, co-owner of West Springfield-based Ace Fire & Water Restoration Inc., citing, as an example, some neighborhoods prone to flood damage and, in rarer cases, sewage backup issues. “But not a whole lot.”

Thus, the task at hand for Brunelle and others, in what is considered an emerging specialty in the construction services sector, is to constantly generate new business. This puts a premium on marketing, he explained, noting that this is one of those businesses where people who need help and need it fast will resort to the phone book. Thus, he has several large, colorful, information-packed ads in those directories.

But it also puts a strong emphasis on word-of-mouth referrals, he continued, or, to get right to it, on those things that generate such positive recommendations. In this case, factors include quick response, quality work, strong, effective communication between Brunelle and his clients, and, of course, helping people get back to a state of normalcy as quickly and painlessly as possible.

The ability to do all that has helped Brunelle quickly grow his portfolio and, quite recently, add what will soon be its centerpiece.

This will be work to restore the historic home at 2527 Elliott St. in Springfield (next door to the new federal courthouse) that was extensively damaged by an electrical fire last January. Its 8,003 square feet of space are “completely cooked,” said Brunelle as he gave a tour of what remains, adding that this will be a total rebuild (price tag: $1.6 million) that will take roughly 18 months to complete.

“We’re going to strip it right down to the brick walls and rebuild it from the inside out,” he explained, adding that the former duplex will be converted into office space.

Landing this huge contract was, Brunelle believes, a function of his company’s visibility and track record, which are the cornerstones to success, as he’s learned through nearly two decades of work in a business specialty he says he entered pretty much on a fluke.

Indeed, Brunelle, a long-time carpenter, said that after one of many layoffs in 1990, he began what he expected to be a short-term assignment with a Connecticut company that specialized in fire, water, and related restoration — and he’s stayed in that business ever since. He made the transition from employee to employer in 2005, starting Ace Fire & Water with the confidence — and conviction — that there was ample room for another player in what was and is a somewhat crowded field.

And thus far, he’s been proven right.

“In a given year, about 3% of the population will be calling their insurance company about a loss involving some kind of damage,” he said, adding that this equates to considerable business across this region in both the residential and commercial quadrants, and Ace is succeeding in gaining progressively larger amounts of market share.

In this issue, BusinessWest will explore how, and, in the process, provide some insight into a construction specialty that most people don’t pay much attention to — until they need it.

No Smoke and Mirrors

It is Friday, and as he talks with BusinessWest in his office/warehouse complex on Elizabeth Street, Brunelle is interrupted early and often by his cell phone.

“This is typical for a Friday … there’s always a lot of calls,” he explained after handling another quick question, noting that clients typically pick that day of the week to get updates on the status of their projects, and crews in the field are always looking ahead to what will be on the slate the following week.

Brunelle, who splits his time between the office and the field, with the latter earning a much higher percentage of his calendar, says there are many updates to offer on a typical Friday. The company usually has 15 to 20 jobs of various sizes ongoing at any given time, and, while half are completed in a month or less, some can take 120 days or more.

And the jobs run the gamut. As the name of the company suggests, many of the projects are, indeed, fire- and water-related, with the latter category being replete with everything from flood damage to bursting pipes in the cold of winter; from so-called ice dams — a condition where ice builds up on the edge of a roof and water trapped behind it seeps into a home, damaging walls and ceilings — to dishwasher malfunctions.

But there are other kinds of work as well.

Indeed, mold remediation is becoming an increasingly common assignment for Ace crews, said Brunelle, adding that sewage backups are another frequently occurring annoyance for home and business owners, and there is considerable high-wind damage to address, as well. And then there’s the motorist who encountered some type of medical problem, apparently, and wound up driving his car into a home on East Mountain Road in Westfield.

“That happens more than you might think,” said Brunelle of the motor vehicle mishap, adding that, in this case, the home was actually knocked off its foundation, making this a rather extensive addition to the Ace portfolio, which has been building steadily since 2005.

That’s when Brunelle and partner Thomas Howe decided to go into business for themselves. They understood that this was a competitive field and that theirs’ was a fairly capital-intensive business, with several pieces of equipment to acquire. But they were confident that they could leverage their combined quarter-century of experience in the restoration field and become significant players in the market.

Which they have. And Brunelle credits this success in large part to the experience he’s amassed over the years.

Dry, Dry Again

He recalls his entry into this business with a firm called Michaud Fire & Water restoration and his first assignment as what’s known as a ‘trim carpenter.’ “This is the very bottom rung of the ladder, the lowest of the low,” he explained. “And when I asked my boss, Gene Michaud, why I had to start there — because I had a lot of experience — he said that, if I wanted to learn the business, I had to start at the bottom and experience everything. And I did.”

After Michaud sold the business several years later, Brunelle went to work for one of the break-off companies, and later joined what was then Action Fire Restoration in Chicopee and worked there for several years. By 2005, he and Howe, with whom he worked at Action, were ready to launch their own venture.

With considerable help from the Small Business Administration, which assisted with the preparation of a detailed, 75-page business plan, the partners got Ace Fire & Water Restoration off the ground, with the requisite specialty equipment and something called IICRC, or Institute of Inspection, Cleaning, and Restoration Certification.

As Brunelle mentioned, repeat business doesn’t come often in this line of work, so most all customers are new customers. Thus, the primary challenges for players like Brunelle are to attract these customers and then deliver the kind of customer service that will yield positive referrals, and thus business from those who have the time and inclination to do more than search the Yellow Pages after disaster strikes.

Regarding the former, Brunelle understands that he must market himself extensively — more than most businesses his size — and he does this though the phone book, but also print, radio, and television ads that are building brand awareness. He’s also joined several business networking groups to enhance his referral-generation capabilities.

As for customer service, Brunelle says his firm can provide a more-personable, hands-on approach then some of the larger players in this market.

“This is one contractor who will return your phone calls,” he said, citing this particular Friday as a good example of his operating style. “Here, your file’s not sitting on the desk of a business on the 20th floor of a building in Chicago.”

Elaborating, Brunelle said that he, like others in this business, keeps vast files of before-and-after pictures — for insurance companies, prospective clients, and other constituencies. What matters most in this business is how the contractor — and therefore the client — gets from one point to the other.

“This is a people-oriented business,” he explained. “The people we’re working with have gone through something traumatic — it’s a difficult time for them. We’re small enough and personal enough to make that time less-difficult for them.”

With this blend of aggressive marketing and strong customer service, Brunelle is looking to grow market share, especially on the commercial side of the ledger sheet, which currently accounts for only about 15% of his total volume.

“We’re working to change that number,” he told BusinessWest, noting that larger players have a firm hold on the commercial market and he wants to alter that equation.

Cellars Market

In one of his television ads, Brunelle hints strongly at the non-repeat nature of the restoration business, and the fact that roughly 97% of the home and business owners in this market won’t have cause to even think about dialing his number in a given year.

“I sincerely hope you never need our services,” says Brunelle in the spot, “but if you do …”

It is the ‘but’ that has given rise to this emerging specialty within the construction sector, and also provided Brunelle with an entrepreneurial opportunity.

He’s making the most of that opportunity by helping the victims of calamity get back on their feet — which, of course, is situation normal for Ace Fire & Water.

Excerpt from BusinessWest.com: www.businesswest.com

West Springfield Business Builds on Commitment to Local Families
Press Release - October 8, 2008

Holyoke, MA- Ace Fire and Water Restoration, Inc. donated toys and books to the local Women, Infants, and Children Program in downtown Holyoke last week.

After learning that the WIC agency on High Street had suffered a flood and lost the toys available in their offices for visiting children and families, Ace offered to stop by with a delivery of new toys and books. A wooden activity center, blocks, and Sesame Street books were among the donated items.

"We are very pleased to present these toys and books to an important resource for local families," says Ace co-owner Gary Brunelle. "Suffering property damage is especially stressful when young children are involved - this was a no-brainer."

Ace Fire and Water Restoration, Inc. has been restoring residential and commercial properties in Western Massachusetts for over 25 years. Ace is locally owned and operated, dedicated to the community, and committed to their craft.

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