What you can expect from us

 A Letter from the President

We are sorry that you have experienced this damage to your property. We know that you have the right to choose who you want to work on your property. We want to thank you for calling REE-Construction and we look forward to proving that calling us was the right choice.

First and foremost, you are our client. We believe you have contacted us because you want things put right. Whether you contacted us on the advice of a friend, were referred by your insurance agent or chose us because we are part of a pre-screened contractor network recommended by your insurance company; we understand our primary responsibility is to you. While we work with your insurance company, we do not work for your insurance company.

The goal of most damage situations is to mitigate the damage and restore property to its pre-loss condition. We know that this situation is inconvenient and not something you expected you would be dealing with. While the process of navigating through a damage claim can seem daunting at times, we will work very hard to help make that process as painless as possible.

Over the past 28+ years we have worked through thousands of projects from the very simple to the very complex. Over that time we have established procedures that we follow to assure the quality of work, clear communication with all the parties and documentation of a project. We strive to make our procedures consistent with industry best practices. Our hope is to be formal enough to provide you with a high level of professionalism and confidence, while flexible enough to meet your specific needs.

You may have contact with several different people from our company during the course of your project. Each one has primary responsibility to supervise the completion of a particular portion or phase of your claim and be knowledgeable about and able to interact with you and the insurance company regarding that portion or phase of the claim. Insurers will usually, at a minimum, treat stabilizing the damage (mitigation), structural repair and any work related to restoring contents as separate parts of the claim. The supervisor responsible for one area of your project may not have the information at hand to immediately address aspects of every area of the claim that comes up, but will make sure you get those answers if you ask.

Some of our clients want us to take charge and provide a turnkey solution to the project. Other clients want a much more hands-on approach.   Most of our clients fall somewhere in between.  We believe we can provide a satisfactory experience for each client’s expectations.  If you will tell us how you want to approach the project, we will do our best to keep you as insulated or involved in the process of putting things back to normal.

At times we may start talk in a lingo peculiar to insurance claims, with references to things like “scopes”, “like kind and quality” or “unit costs”. Please don’t be bashful about telling us to speak regular English. We apologize in advance if we backslide and would like to let you know that the old saying that “there is no such thing as a dumb question” is true. We are always willing to explain anything we do, if you only ask.

Most every situations is covered under the terms of the original work authorization or other contract that you will sign or have already signed. If you read it and have questions, please ask, because we will refer back to that document in making decisions.

Any scope of work (i.e., estimate) you already have or will receive from us contains the descriptive details and project price of completing the work we are offering to do. It is meant to be the plan that we follow in completing your project. It provides the specifications of what we are planning to do for you. If you want an explanation of anything on that scope, please ask. This scope may be modified, with your approval, as the project progresses and if additional information becomes available (e.g., hidden damage is uncovered or more accurate material specifications become available).

While most insurance claims involve restoring property to its pre-loss condition, we often are asked to make upgrades in materials, alternate repairs or other changes to the specifications that appear in the original scope of work. This is perfectly appropriate and we are happy to do so as a change order. Our experience is that many types of improvements are not paid under the insurance policy’s coverage. Other kinds of changes that you approve may or may not affect the overall cost or your portion of the cost of the project.

We have standard procedures for making changes from the original estimate. Be aware that changes can affect scheduling and frequent changes can cause significant delays. While our contract allows for verbal approval of change orders, if they are more complicated than say a change in a color or trim style, we will probably ask for you to sign a written change order before proceeding. It is possible we may rewrite the entire scope of work to incorporate a significant change and ask for approval of that revised scope and pricing before we proceed.

Putting things down in writing seems to be the best policy.  If it is in writing, there is a lot less chance for a problem to occur. We make a concerted effort to document any communication in the job file for future reference.

Along those lines, we suggest that you keep a “diary” of the loss for your records. It may be handy when you make a final settlement with your insurance company to have even a simple a record of events like the time you spent cleaning up before we got there, what day you met with the adjuster or other information regarding the claim.

There may come a time when you feel a little overwhelmed with paperwork. It is the nature of the beast. Particularly when dealing with insurance companies, we are obliged to establish a comprehensive paper trail to document the phases of every project. Again, please ask if you have questions. We will make an effort to provide satisfactory answers about anything within our area of control.

If this project is expected to last for several weeks or is of a significant size, we may send out interim invoice(s) for a commencement deposit or based upon an approximate percentage of completion. These invoices will be due on receipt. We don’t generally get paid directly by insurance companies and we will look for your help to make sure they are reminded to pay promptly. If there are change orders that you approve that we agree won’t be covered by the insurance policy, we may ask that they be paid for when you approve them.

You may well have additional questions or concerns as work proceeds. We don’t control what the insurance company covers or how their process works, but if there are questions about things that we do control, we want to address these quickly. We believe molehills can become mountains if they aren’t ironed out early. Please ask your Project Superintendent on the job, call our office during regular hours or make notes to refer to later if we aren’t there to answer your questions when they occur to you.
When we are done, we hope you will feel very comfortable referring us to your closest friends and family because we helped make a bad situation easier to deal with.

We look forward to working with you and plan to put things right in a quick, competent, appropriate and complete manner.

Ron Reese CR, WLS

President
REE-Construction