VIDEO: Emergency Water Mitigation + Insurance Concerns After a Water Loss

10/7/2020 (Permalink)

Tina, Jim and Dan on the scene.

March of 2019 was not a fun time for Tina Coppins, Property Manager at Appletree Business Park in Cheektowaga. Someone left a sink running over the weekend at one of her tenants’ offices. That sink overflowed, causing 2,000 square feet of damage before anyone found it.

Luckily, Tina had an Emergency Ready Profile with SERVPRO. Using her ERP, Tina was able to respond quickly, professionally and comprehensively, saving her a huge amount of time, money and headaches down the road.

Our Marketing Manager Dan recently sat down with Tina to talk about the loss and how her ERP helped her to respond. Jim Wright of Wright Insurance was kind enough to join us to provide the insurance perspective on what happened. We’ll provide the transcript below, but you should definitely check out the video on YouTube as well.

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DAN: Alright! My name is Dan Bauer, I'm with SERVPRO of The Southtowns, SERVPRO of West Seneca/Lancaster. Here with me today is Tina Coppins, property manager here at Appletree Business Park, and Jim Wright of Wright Insurance.  How you guys doing today?

BOTH: Great. Great.  

DAN: We are here. We're talking about a loss that happened here, a water loss last March, 2019. That was over at Empire State College, one of the tenants here. Somebody left a sink on overnight and it flooded a 2,000 square foot space. Tina can you kind of tell me a little bit more about what happened?

TINA: Sure. So it was a Sunday afternoon. The cleaner came in and walked in to water on the floor, immediately called my guard, my guard turned around and called me, I called my maintenance guy. Within 20 minutes of that phone call, I had my maintenance guy here, got the water shut off. 

From there, what it ended up being, on the sink, a pipe blew apart. We're not sure how it came apart, it came apart, somebody left the sink on  and it just flooded the space. From there, meanwhile, my maintenance guy was on his way here. I called the cleaning company, asked them if they could get their truck mounts out there. Meanwhile, they said, yeah, we'll be there within half an hour.

My second step was I called SERVPRO, because I have an ERP with you guys and I know you guys do great on water cleanups. So what I did was I called the office and they said, within an hour they had a full team here, and once the team got here, what we did was, the team got here, we backed off our cleaning company. We told them "once SERVPRO gets here, you guys are done."

And that's exactly what happened. They left. My maintenance guy stayed. And we got the place cleaned up.

DAN: What was going through your head? You're the property manager, they're the tenant. How do those responsibilities differ? When did you decide to get involved?

TINA: What happened was, meanwhile, as I was talking to the cleaning company, my contact Jane showed up. She doesn't live that far from the building. I'm about 50 minutes away from the building.

So when she got in, I talked to her, I said "Jane, do you want me to call in the next step and get this going?" and she said "Absolutely. You call who you think, Tina, can do the job." I said "SERVPRO." She was totally on board with it.

And then that's when you guys came in. My maintenance guys, meanwhile,  my one maintenance guy I should say, was ripping off all the base cove while everybody was setting up and we got to get the air dryers going.

So we actually mitigated the loss, I think, by us reacting quick. Getting another truck mount here, getting the truck mounts here first and then getting SERVPRO.

DAN: Yeah, and I think you guys did a good job with that rapid response, which can save you a ton of money, ton of headaches, and stop the damage as it's happening.

Now Jim, as an insurance agent, how would you say, if Tina were your client and she called and said this is happening, how would you respond, what advice would you give her?

JIM: The biggest thing is us to get on the same page in terms of communication. Really trying to get a handle on how much damage was actually done. And for me to actually go back, refer to the policy and find out what players need to be brought in.

SERVPRO, an excellent choice of helping out to mitigate the loss like you guys did. But you guys took a lot of proactive steps yourself, which is necessary.

So with that being said, probably just the initial part of that claim, trying to get the players into place. And with a lot of the insurance companies I work with, this would be kind of an emergency response just because of the amount and the large area with a number of tenants involved coming into play.

We would be able to get a hold of them immediately and they would be able to bring out somebody immediately as well.

DAN: Say you had a crystal ball and you know this sort of loss is going to happen to somebody, a commercial property, property manager. What sort of coverages should they have in place, what sort of preparations should they make, just in case something catastrophic does happen.

JIM: Yeah. Well one thing we kind of do to kind of get ahead of this situation is to try to periodically meet with our clients at least once a year and review the main points of the policy.

And the big main points of the policy, there are certain levels of an insurance policy, there's sort of a broad, basic and special coverage and that will determine what kind of coverage you do have. And now that we're actually paying out monies, there is actual cash value, and then there is replacement cost.

Replacement cost says this: it just says, we're going to pay today's material cost as well as labor cost to get something going. The actual cash value, if you're subject to that, you might be getting hit up with depreciation, and the long run you're only going to be paying for a part of the claim, and that's not going to make anyone happy with this type of loss.

DAN: Tina, I imagine you have certain insurance requirements for the tenants here. Can you walk me through, what are those and why are those important to you?

TINA: So, our tenants, when they sign a lease, they have to have a certain level of insurance for liability, workman's comp, they have to have theft and damages. So we have thresholds for them and they all have to meet them. So every tenant has on file their insurance policy or their certificate I should say that names us as the additional insured.

DAN: And Jim, similar question for you. What are those important coverages or important considerations that a commercial property manager has to have, they're thinking about insurance requirements, what do you ask them to think about?

JIM: Well, I think Tina is doing all the right things here. Basically, they want to see the amount of coverages, if there are limits of liability that you want them to meet, as well as, I touched on replacement cost, some of those features.

Some of those features can actually be dictated in the certificate of insurance. But one step that I'm asking my clients to do is, of late, is this: it's not only having the certificate of insurance, but actually make the tenant, in your case, go back to their insurance company and have them formally listed so you get a copy of the policy

Not only will you get a copy of the policy showing the important coverages, but you'll also be notified if there's any accidental or intentional cancellation of the policy. Because you don't want to find that you're going to be responsible all of the damages because there's only one policy in place.

You want your tenants to be responsible for what they signed up for and then you can take care of the rest.

DAN: Anything else you two want to cover? Tina?

TINA: I just think that, the importance is, is having your ERP in place so you know a list of where everything's at, who you need to call, who's your electrician, who's your sprinkler, who's your plumber, who's your general contractor so when something happens, you're ready to go. You have an ERP in place. You guys have helped me get my ERP together which is huge.

It's in my office and that's where it sits. So if it's a weekend or it's midnight or if it's afternoons after I leave at 5 o'clock, somebody can grab it. My security guard, we have a security guy here 24/7, he can grab it. Or the maintenance guy, I can call him, I can say "hey, we have this going on," he comes into the office, there's a printout up there, and then I have my folder with the ERP in there. He can pull it and say "okay, this is who I need to call."

In a time of panic, what do you forget? You forget, who should I call, who do I need to call? You totally forget. So it's always good to have that at your fingertips.

DAN: Thank you for that. And I'm glad we could help. 

Jim, any closing remarks?

JIM: Tina does a great job here with her emergency response plan because usually, we're asking her who she'd like to use, I think SERVPRO is a great example of, they've got all the players in place, they've seen it all, they've done it all, so they know what to do.

But having that plan in place, I as the insurance representative have to go back and ask her who she wants to work with. If those decisions are already made in that quick of a time instance, I should say, or an emergency, it just makes the whole claim a lot smoother.

DAN: Awesome, thank you both!

I'm Dan Bauer with SERVPRO of The Southtowns, SERVPRO of West Seneca/Lancaster. Tina Coppins, property manager here at the beautiful Appletree Business Park in Cheektowaga. Jim Wright of Wright Insurance. Thank you both for being here.

BOTH: Thank you. Thank you.