Challenges You May Encounter as a Restoration Contractor
Preserving historical or sentimental value: While general contractors focus on constructing or expanding buildings, restoration contractors focus on returning a damaged building to its original, functional state. You may be dealing with a home that was damaged by a disaster, for example, or a historic building that requires restoration–in other words, a property that may have sentimental or historical value associated with it. This means you’re in a sensitive position and your clients may be particularly hard to please, since they may be very attached to the way the building was before. Heritage buildings, in particular, require utmost care to minimize any damage or changes to historically significant elements in the building. There may be disagreements on the best way to accomplish the restoration, and misunderstandings may result.
Choosing the right products: Technology is moving forward at lightning speed and new products are constantly entering the market. Contractors often welcome these developments because the new materials and tools can make it easier to construct higher-quality, more durable buildings at a lower cost. However, it can get complicated when using new materials on old structures, because there may be unexpected chemical reactions that cause additional damage–and you may have no way to know that ahead of time. Color matching can also be an issue, because colors can fade or change over time, and the colors or type of paint used in an undamaged area of the building may have become obsolete since they were used. You may do the best you can to reproduce the color, but it still may not match perfectly.
Pinpointing hidden issues: If you’re not paying close enough attention, you may get a water-damaged wall looking better than it did before the flood–only to have all your hard work ruined by an undetected leak in the pipes! When dealing with complex damage to a building, it takes a lot of skill to detect and properly deal with every single potential problem. Sometimes, it may be nearly impossible to find them all.
Meeting deadlines: If you’ve been hired to repair damage from a large-scale disaster, you’ll need to plan very carefully to ensure that you have the right number of workers with the right amount of material to get the building up and running as soon as possible. Your work can be unpredictable, and even seasoned contractors may miscalculate sometimes, resulting in delays.
You do the best you can to provide professional, timely and high-quality service–but you’re only human. Getting insurance means you won’t have to worry about challenges like these harming your business.
