Introduction to Project Management for Water Losses

The moment a call comes in about a water loss, the clock starts. Everything you do in the next thirty minutes, before you even load the van, shapes how the job runs from that point forward. Phone triage is not a formality. It is your first opportunity to gather the information you need to send the right people with the right gear. On that first call, you want to know whether it is residential or commercial, what part of the property is affected, where the water came from, and roughly how long it has been sitting. That last point matters more than most callers realise. A burst flexi-hose that has been running since yesterday morning is a very different job to a washing machine overflow that happened twenty minutes ago. Use that call to start forming your Category assessment, your equipment list, and your PPE requirements. If the caller mentions sewage, grey water, or a source you cannot immediately identify, flag it. Document the call with a time stamp the moment you hang up. That record is the beginning of your job file. And if the information you have gathered tells you this is a multi-room commercial loss with a contamination risk, do not send one technician with a portable extractor and a couple of air movers. Dispatch the resources the job actually needs.

When you arrive on site, the instinct is to get straight into extraction. Resist it. Safety assessment comes first, every single time. Before anyone enters the affected area, confirm that power has been isolated to the wet zones. Do not assume the homeowner has done it. Do not assume the building manager has done it. Check it yourself. Assess the water category based on what you can see and what you have been told. If there is any doubt about the source, treat it as a higher category until you can confirm otherwise. Put your PPE on before you walk in, not after you have already been standing in it for five minutes. Once the area is confirmed safe to enter, stop and photograph everything before you move a single piece of furniture or place a single piece of equipment. Photograph from every angle. Capture the ceiling, the walls, the floor, the contents, the source. A technician on a Category 2 loss once said it well: "I thought I'd just get the water up first and photo it after. The assessor wanted to see the original conditions and I had nothing to show him." That photographic record is the foundation of your scope, your estimate, and your defence if the claim is ever disputed. Once it is gone, it is gone.

Insurer notification is not something you do when you get around to it. Most policies have defined timeframes for claim notification, and as the contractor attending the loss, you are typically expected to notify the insurer as soon as practical after your initial site attendance. For significant losses, an initial assessment report is generally expected within twenty-four hours. The specifics vary between insurers and between panels, so make it your business to know the requirements of every panel you work on before you are standing on a wet floor trying to remember what the protocol is. Build those requirements into your initial response workflow so they happen automatically. A typical insurer instruction might sound like: "We need the IAR by close of business tomorrow and confirmation that the property is secured." That is not an unusual request. It is a standard expectation, and if you cannot meet it consistently, you will not stay on that panel for long.

The initial response phase sets the tone for everything that follows. A well-managed response, with accurate triage, proper site establishment, thorough documentation, and timely insurer notification, creates a job that runs efficiently and gets paid without argument. A poorly managed response, where the wrong resources turn up, the site is disturbed before photos are taken, and the insurer is notified three days later, creates problems that compound at every stage. The decisions you make in the first hour are the ones that matter most. Treat phone triage as a professional discipline, treat site safety as non-negotiable, and treat your documentation as if every photo and every time stamp will one day be read by someone who was not there. Because sometimes, it will be.