The industry is in the doldrums at the moment. The insurance companies are cash settling most of their claims to save money. They are basically banks who use your premium to invest so have suffered due to the global financial crisis. Some of them are using validation companies who are seriously under scoping the damage to peoples homes so they can please their master and offer a low settlement.
However moves are a foot which may bring this practice to an end.
There is a parliamentry group looking into this. They have been stoked up by certain building companies who are being used as patsies. They are scoping jobs but the insurers are then offering a lower cash settlement on the strength of their quote. Basically they have spent hours of work for no return. Because the policyholders aren't recieving the full amount to cover the damage they find it difficult to find a professional builder to do the work so a lot of them are having the work done cash in hand. The amount of cash settlements taking place is estimated at £26,000,000 per day. The members of parliament are concerned that because a large chunk of this cash is going onto the black market the government are losing out on VAT and PAYE reciepts. Also there is a certain individual who has married up with solicitors to find houses which have mould problems because the insurer has not instructed a drying company to dry out. Should a court case be succesfull then it will open the flood gates, pardon the pun.
Anyway hopefully things will change soon. I did over 40k worth of work last year but have retired to concentrate on our supply business so there is still a fair bit of work out there.
To be in with any sort of a chance to pick work up you need training to make sure you know what you are doing. This isn't like carpet cleaning where you may have to fork out for a new carpet if it goes wrong. I know companies who have had to fork out over 80k to put right jobs which weren't dried properly. The BDMA would be my first port of call as a lot of insurers and loss adjusters insist on you being a BDMA qualified technician. See here:
http://www.bdma.org.uk/Once trained you can apply to join various networks who dish this sort of work out. I would also contact local loss adjusters, brokers etc, taking them to lunch goes down well.
Peter I would disagree about needing a truckmount as most people in the industry don't, however having one is a great asset.
