Equipment that lasts forever — it’s honestly a Water Damage Restoration business owner’s dream come true. It may seem like nothing more than a dream, but our business Power Dry has found a way to turn it into a reality. Here’s how we keep the tools and machines we use day in, and day out in tip-top shape.
Why Careful Equipment Use Matters
Before we dive into the how, let’s be upfront about the why. You know just as well as we do that the equipment necessary to restore homes and businesses to their pre-flood state is pricey. For most business owners, these kinds of expenses make start-up hard enough, no one wants to find themselves covering the cost of an unexpected replacement.
Outside of staying on budget, care of equipment and tools is actually a part of the customer experience. The flood victims we work with are anxious to get back life as usual, which means restoration experts need to be able to work as quickly as possible on their jobs and avoid all delays. Unplanned repairs or replacements are certainly not going to help with staying on schedule!
The Employee Quiz Keeping Our Equipment in Excellent Condition
So much of the work we do in the water damage restoration business relies on the daily use of equipment. When tools and machines are in heavy use, being loaded in and out of trucks, they often wear down or break.
In our experience, we found that our technicians are the most important employees in maintaining our equipment. They’re the employees handling the tools and their careful use and maintenance of these items are essential to making them last forever.
That being said, it isn’t always easy to communicate just how important it is that they’re cautious and careful with the tools they use each day, so we adopted a training activity that really gets the point across.
Each new production team member is required to take a quiz called “The Price is Right.” This four section quiz requires them to research the cost of replacing the equipment we own at Power Dry. They’re able to reference a provided catalog to complete the quiz and it’s not about passing our failing. The point is the come to an understanding of just how hard it is on the bottom line when carelessness results in broken restoration equipment.
Keep Equipment Maintenance Simple
Once we feel that our employees understand just how important our equipment is to our business, we make it as simple as possible for them to care for and maintain the equipment our business owns.
We do this by providing them with an excess of the supplies, like ratcheting straps, necessary to secure tools and equipment while in transit. We know that jobs often come up that require us to transport more equipment than is typical, and we want our employees equipped to carefully secure everything in the truck before they take off for a job.
We also have a system in place for cleaning and maintenance of these items. Using check-off lists, employees are required to keep up with careful documentation when each piece has been thoroughly clean and undergone preventative maintenance if necessary.
At More Floods, we connect water damage restoration business owners with the operational tools needed to simplify daily tasks, like the maintenance and transportation of equipment. We have developed check-off lists and systems that work and we’re anxious to share them with small business owners who are serious about succeeding in our industry.
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