Restoration Rewind

Delta Development Group Monthly Newsletter

October 2015

A Festival of Delta in Utah

Mac Urie and Delta Disaster Services of Southern Utah were recently recognized in the Cedar City Festival of Homes. Mac and his crew at D.D.S of Southern Utah were called out to a fire job at one of the festival’s featured homes. The home suffered a great deal of fire and smoke damage from a fire in a shed also on the property.

The smoke damage reached every room of the house and in the end was so extensive that the restoration required a full demolition and reconstruction. From the festival brochure, “Through a careful and experienced restoration and rebuild process, this home was fully restored, inside and out, to give the home owners the ability to continue living their American dream.”

Congratulations to Mac and his whole crew at Delta Disaster Services of Southern Utah on a job very well done. Thank you from all of us for continuing to represent the Delta Disaster Services brand with quality and professionalism.

You can read the entire article on Mac’s restoration project here http://cedarcityfestivalofhomes.com/fire-restoration/

GREAT JOB!

Happy Workers are Productive Workers

How do you motivate a group of employees to work hard and help your business grow? Luckily, motivating your employees doesn't take a lot of flare or even a lot of resources. In fact, it could require as little as scheduling a few minutes just to say "hi."

As a small business owner, you need to maximize revenue and increase productivity, which means you need your staff to work as efficiently as possible. To get you off to a good start, follow these top ways to motivate your employees.

1. Communicate Better If you're nothing more than a face on a newsletter or a name on an email, what motivation will your employees have to meet your goals? The importance of employee communications is often overlooked. You should communicate with them frequently, and actually speak with them face-to-face. Your staff needs to know they are valued, and communicating in person with them is the best way to show your appreciation for their hard work.

2. Be An Example

You can't expect your employees to work hard or behave the way you want them to if you don't lead by example. If you show your excitement about the company's goals, your employees will get on-board and work to achieve those goals. Good moods are always infectious -- especially in the workplace.

3. Empower Them

Give your employees more of a say in how they do their job. Ask for their input and get suggestions on how they can improve their performance. Most employees have ideas about how they can be more efficient, but they may not share them with you unless you specifically ask them. Use regular employee reviews to discuss these improvements, but don't just ask. If you really want to empower and motivate your employees, you need to take their advice and implement it. You should also give them the authority to make their own decisions, such as providing service for a client up to a certain point without needing to get prior approval.

4. Offer Opportunities For Advancement Your employees are more motivated when they know they're working towards something. If they think there's no opportunity for advancement, they don't have much to work for. Nobody wants to work a dead-end job. Motivate your employees by offering training that gives them the skills they need to climb their career ladder. Grooming young employees to move on to better opportunities is valuable to you as well

because it enables you to build your company's reputation as a great place to work.

5. Provide Incentives Incentives are always motivation boosters -- and they don't have to be expensive. You can offer incentives like an extra paid day off, gift cards, tickets to the movies, or other low-cost ways to show your appreciation. Of course, cash rewards are always good incentives as well. Motivation plays a key role in keeping your best employees, too. If you don't consistently motivate your employees, you're sure to experience a higher amount of turnover.

CASH IN THE DOOR!

Based on August Royalties…

The proverbial “Kickin’ it in The Butt” seems appropriate here! Everyone had very good collection efforts in August and at the top of the list is:

Southern Colorado $225,000+

September numbers are still in the works…Keep up the great work!

Do you know these 10 claims terms?

Insurance was created to spread risk from individuals to multitudes. Spreading the risk from one person to many is the essence of insurance. The risk-spreading model has taken many forms over the centuries.

In the days of sailing ships, merchants found shipping to be inherently risky. The risks of shipping by sea were clearly too much for an individual merchant to bear. The loss of one ship could bankrupt a merchant, so the merchants spread the risk of their business enterprises among each other. With rudimentary insurance, the risk of shipping was equitably spread among those subscribing to the loan, and no single merchant suffered when a ship was lost at sea.

Originally, insurers were merely merchants who occasionally invested in insurance. As the volume of trade increased in the seventeenth century, some merchants specialized and became the first professional insurers.

Today, if you earn a living from insurance, language is important — for the sales process, during underwriting, and also at the point of claim. How well do you know your claims terminology? Keep reading to test your knowledge.

Average: A term used in settlement of claims. It may have originally come from the French word “avarie”, meaning loss or damage. There are both general and particular average clauses. Average clauses are the precursor of co-insurance clauses. They refer to any partial loss or damage due to insured perils. It requires the insured to maintain coverage equal to

a stated percentage of the actual cash value of the subject of the insurance, otherwise the insured must pay a part of the loss.

Bordereau(x): A detailed report of insurance premiums or losses affected by reinsurance or insurance. A loss bordereau contains a detailed list of claims and claims expenses outstanding and paid by the managing general agent, third party administrator or reinsured during the reporting period, reflecting the amount of indemnity applicable thereto.

Cause of Action: A statement in a lawsuit of a claim against the defendant. Modern lawsuits in the U.S. usually state multiple causes of action or "counts" against the defendant. A multiple cause of action suit may seek damages for negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent infliction of emotional distress, trespass, assault, battery, and breach of contract.

Constructive total loss (CTL): An instance in which the cost of recovering and/or repairing damaged goods would exceed the insured value.

Ex Gratia Payment: A claim payment not necessarily covered by the terms and conditions of an insurance policy but made as a commercial accommodation by the insurer to the policyholder. Fortuity Doctrine: An insurance contract insures against the risks of loss that are neither intended nor expected from the standpoint of the insured. Intentional acts done with the intent to recover insurance proceeds are never insured. The fortuity doctrine requires that the loss be accidental to be covered. The rule embodies a fundamental and significant public policy interest that in some contexts is sufficiently important to preclude coverage claims even when there are explicit agreements to the contrary.

Loss In Progress Rule: Insurance can only indemnify an insured against risks of loss that are both unknown and unexpected. If a loss is already in progress at the time the policy is acquired, the loss is no longer fortuitous but is rather a certainty. The Loss In Progress Rule prohibits recovery for a non-fortuitous loss.

Prima Facie Case: When a party establishes all of the evidence necessary to prove a case. The plaintiff, who always presents evidence first in a trial, must present a prima facie case before the defendant will be required to present evidence to defeat the plaintiff's claim. If the plaintiff fails to present a prima facie case the court will enter judgment in favor of the defendant and not require production of evidence to rebut the evidence presented by the plaintiff.

Subrogation: An equitable remedy where a person who pays the debt of another is entitled to assume the rights of the person whose debt he or she paid. In insurance, when an insurer pays a claim, it assumes all of the rights of the person insured, to sue and recover the amounts paid from any third party who was responsible for the loss.

Uberrimae Fidei: A universally recognized defining characterization of insurance and reinsurance. Literally, utmost good faith. Among other differences from ordinary relationships, the nature of insurance and reinsurance transactions is dependent upon a mutual trust and a lively regard for the interests of the other party, even if detrimental to one's own. A breach of utmost good faith, especially in regard to full and voluntary disclosure of the elements of risk of loss, is accepted as grounds for any necessary reformation or redress, including rescission and tort damages in most jurisdictions.

These definitions were taken from Insurance Law, the most comprehensive, and yet practical, insurance law authority available today. Written by nationally-renowned insurance coverage expert Barry Zalma, an insurance coverage attorney, consultant, expert witness and blogger,

Added to the Short List Congratulations and a good luck handshake are in order for Emmis Chellman and Delta Disaster Services of Southern Colorado. Emmis received the following notification from Crawford Contractor Connection earlier this week.

Congratulations! You have been added to the following:

Clients / Trades General Contracting, Mitigation, Board Up, Roofing, Remodeling

• 203K Multi Affinity • Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association • AMAC-The Association of Mature American Citizens • Beneplace • Consumer Direct • Crawford Consumer Services • Ford Motor Company • Home Owners Network • MBA PEO and Jack Rice Insurance • MetLife Consumer Services • MJ Insurance • Multi Affinity • National Association of Professional Agents • Professional Association of Innkeepers International • Progressive Consumer • Quicken Loans • Remain Home Solutions • Target Consumer • The Northern Trust Co. • USAA Consumer Services • Visiting Angels • Wells Fargo 203(k)

Clients / Trades: General Contracting, Board Up, Roofing, Remodeling • America’s Homeowner Alliance

Clients / Trades: General Contracting, Remodeling, Roofing • Renovation Ready

We appreciate your hard work and dedication in completing the items required to be activated on the Contractor Connection network.

Emmis and his entire staff have been working very hard over the last year or so to gain as much market share in Southern Colorado as possible. It appears his plan for

Southern domination is right on track. Congratulations you guys, the flood gates are now open, but we know you can handle everything they will throw at you. Keep up the great work!

AMC Elite is currently our go to company for large loss drying equipment. AMC’s Owner Patrick, will be at our 2016 National Convention!

"Same Day Delivery and Setup Anywhere in the United States"

(720) 810-0675

AMC ELITE provides large loss drying support exclusively for restoration contractors. If you need additional desiccant dehumidification delivered and setup or total turnkey services including delivery, setup, layflat installed, moisture mapping, monitoring and documentation, call us! Our large fleet staged throughout the United States allows us to respond quickly and provide "Same Day Delivery and Setup Anywhere in the United States." AMC Elite has been providing large loss drying support for 25 years.

The reason AMC ELITE can provide unparalleled response time and at the best pricing in the industry is because we own all 135 desiccant dehumidifiers, 25 generators, 2,000 air movers and our labor is provided by AMC Elite employees, not temp labor.

Are you paying attention to price trends?

Xactware Publishes September 2015 Price List

A summary of price changes reported in this update is as follows (this percent change is based on the national averages that have been reported since the August 2015 price list publication and from September 2014 to September 2015):

August to September

September 2014 to September 2015

U.S. Canada U.S. Canada

30-yr. Laminated Shingle Labor and Material 0.61% 0.56% 2.08% 2.10%

Common Drywall Material 0.00% 0.00% 5.39% 3.56% Common Labor and Material -0.26% -0.27% 3.40% 3.70% Common Lumber Material -0.38% -0.01% -3.06% -1.66% Common Material Only 0.02% -0.11% 1.36% 1.94% Retail Labor Rates 0.28% 0.37% 2.46% 2.85% Pricing research for the September 2015 publication shows that the figures in the Labor and Material report, which measures common material and labor used in claims and remodeling, decreased slightly in the United States and Canada when compared to August 2015. This is also true of the Common Lumber Material report. Figures in the

30-year Laminated Shingle Labor and Material and Retail Labor Rates reports increased in both countries. The Common Drywall Material report showed no change in either country while the Common Material Only report showed an increase in the United States and a decrease in Canada.

Where Have All the Construction Workers Gone?

Nevada now employs 60 percent fewer construction workers than it did during the housing boom. Some found new careers. Others left the country.

The buzz and hammering of construction has returned to this city, which was especially hard hit by the housing bust. The construction workers, however, have not.

At the peak of the boom, Nevada employed 146,000 construction workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Now the state employs only 63,000, a 59 percent decrease—and a two-decade low. That’s led to some labor shortages, says Nat Hodgson, the executive director of the Southern Nevada Home Builders Association. “The actual skilled workers building the houses—it’s a challenge

finding them,” he told me. “It’s hard to entice them to come back until we can convince them we’re really going to start growing again.” It’s not just Nevada. Nationally, construction employment is down 19 percent from its 2007 peak. The decline is particularly stark in areas hard hit by the housing bust. In Arizona, construction employment has fallen 50 percent from its pre-recession peak; in California, employment has dropped 28 percent in the field. In Florida, construction employment is down 40 percent. Across the country, there are 1.4 million fewer people employed in construction than there were in 2007, data shows. But only 811,000 construction workers actually show up in unemployment-report data. To be sure, there

are differences in the way these two data sets are collected that might account for some of the discrepancy, but it raises an interesting question: What happened to all of the construction workers felled during the housing bust? James J. Mikulich may provide one clue. His family has lived in Nevada for more than a century, prospering in industries that built the region, such as logging and transportation. He was in the tile and marble industry for 25 years, installing floors and interiors in homes and hotels. Then in 2012 he blew out his hip and had to have replacement surgery. While he was rehabilitating his leg, he had a revelation. “The economy was down turning real bad, construction was at its lowest point in 30 years, and I said, I don’t want to enter back into that,” he told me. One morning, after waking up at 4 a.m. and doing his stretches, he had an idea. He opened the Sunday careers section in the newspaper, called on a higher power, and then closed his eyes and put his finger down on a random place on the page, deciding that whatever career it suggested, he’d pursue. His finger landed on an ad for a massage-therapy program at a local career college. “I said, ‘What’s a better thing than to be able to help somebody out—help the elderly, help the athletes, make a difference?’” he told me. He went down to the school, the Milan Institute, and got more information, then started doing the pre-requisites that would allow him to enroll in the eight-month, 720-hour course to become a licensed-massage therapist. It was tough transitioning back to being a student in his fifties, Mikulich said. He was worried about his ability to learn new things such as anatomy and kinesiology, and feared that when he graduated school, he’d flunk the certification test. But he continued to get up at 4 a.m., do his hip rehab, go to school from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., and then go home and study. Before the certification test, he took over one room in the home he shares with his elderly mother and told her he needed total silence to study for the month before the test. And he passed. He now works as a massage therapist at Las Vegas conventions, boxing competitions in town, at a beauty salon, and on a freelance basis. Mikulich, who is now 54, was probably more easily able to transition careers than many construction workers: He could go to school full-time because he'd saved up some money and because his children were grown. Being a full-time student allowed him to receive a Pell Grant that covered about one-third of the $12,000 cost of the program. He also cashed in some retirement accounts to pay for school.

For most unemployed workers, getting together the resources to go back to school can be extremely difficult, especially if they’re trying to support a family. That’s because many construction workers—and others displaced by the recession—spent their savings paying the bills while they were out of work. In one survey, only 15 percent of unemployed workers said they had enrolled in training programs that would help them gain new skills to find a new job. And only about 100,000 to 150,000 dislocated workers—people who have lost their job and are unlikely to return to that occupation—receive retraining from federal funding each year, according to Carl Van Horn, the director of the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development. Many people who used to work in the construction field have moved around a good bit since losing their jobs, sometimes to other states where they could stay in the field. Mikulich told me he had friends in the industry who had moved to New York, Pennsylvania, and Phoenix. While reporting from North Dakota a few years ago, I ran into numerous men who had moved there after losing their jobs in construction somewhere else. Overall employment in North Dakota has grown by 30 percent since the recession began, and construction employment has doubled. One labor-union coalition even

banded together to recruit construction workers to North Dakota. Construction employment in Texas is up 18 percent since 2010, and has nearly reached its pre-recession peak. Some workers who had immigrated to the U.S. for work in construction may also have returned to their home countries when the recession hit. A report from the Pew Hispanic Center found that during the economic slump, for the first time in four decades, more Mexican immigrants left the U.S. than entered it. And construction-heavy states including California, Arizona, Colorado, and

Nevada lost unauthorized-immigrant workers between 2009 and 2012, according to a separate Pew report.

Latinos made up 24 percent of the construction industry in 2011, and the industry was the sixth-largest employer of Latinos, according to the National Council of La Raza. Some of these declines could be the result of laws such as SB 1070 in Arizona, which required police to question anyone they believed to be in the country illegally. Often, a worker’s fate would depend on whether he was skilled or unskilled, said Cindy Creighton, the executive director of the Nevada Subcontractors Association. Many unskilled workers would refer family members or roommates to jobs, and then they all would be dramatically affected during job cutbacks, Creighton said. “When four, five, six people in a family lose work, they had no choice but to leave the area, or change professions,” she said. There is a certain irony, though, that so many people had to leave construction, though, since the industry is now so short-handed. “Everybody’s just screaming for labor—you can literally go door-to-door, fill out your application, do your e-Verify, and go to work,” she said. Whether that means people who left construction during the recession should come back is up to them. James Mikulich says he still drags his feet across tile floors, looking for uneven workmanship, and likes to linger over marble. Still, for others, returning to construction might not be a bad bet. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that occupations in the healthcare and construction fields will be some of the fastest-growing jobs between 2012 and 2022. Healthcare is expected to grow at a rate of 2.6 percent a year—construction will grow at the same rate. But though the construction sector will add 1.6 million new jobs over that decade, economists said, the industry still won't return to its 2006 peak level, even by 2022.

2016 Planning is Upon Us

Where did 2015 go? Yes, it’s that time again. Planning for 2016 is upon us. Below are some highlights and suggestions of what you should be thinking about over the next three months:

REMEMBER -- Failing to plan is planning to fail. You need to thoroughly plan for the next year, every year. Start now “thinking” and jotting notes to yourself about it. Set a date (Goal date) to have a more formal plan and list in place. (I would suggest December 1). Share the information with your spouse or business partner. Share the appropriate information with your employees.

When we reach January 1 you should have a very good plan for going forward. Your employees should know what your goals are and how they can help you and the business attain those goals. We have a Wednesday Webinar scheduled to discuss 2016 planning. We will also schedule individual phone calls with each franchisee to discuss their 2016 business plan, objectives and budgets.

The things you will want to start thinking about:

Objectives (Sales and Production) Sales Goals for the year Mitigation Construction New Profit Centers? (Asbestos, Crime Scene Cleanup, etc) Marketing: New Accounts Plumbers Agents Fire Department Direct Repair Programs Events: Golf Tournaments, Charities, etc. Budgets Marketing Mitigation Construction Overhead expenses

Employees Training and Education New employees needed – Where and What Capital Expenditures Mitigation Equipment Vehicles Office Equipment, Computers September, October, November can be slower months. Utilize the time to catch your breath and be ready for the cold and freezes!

And We Will Leave You With This…