The Restoration Roundup is Restoration Intel’s daily sweep of what the industry actually said in the last 24 hours — across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads, the trade press, and the restoration podcasts. Only substantive items run: product news, data, named opinions, hires and moves, event announcements. No engagement bait, no filler — and on quiet days, we say so instead of padding.
A trade-press day: the IICRC named its 2026–2027 board, First Onsite made a healthcare-safety hire with real credentials behind it, R&R ran a Kevin Coy argument about which services actually belong in a restoration company, a new Ask the Expert episode took fire restoration past the burn, and two documentation and after-hours pieces filled out the wire. Six items made the cut.
IICRC names its 2026–2027 board: James Tole stays on top, Craig Powers is 2nd vice president
The IICRC announced the election of its 2026–2027 Board of Directors and Executive Committee officers, published by C&R Magazine (Tuesday, Oct 27). James Tole continues as President and Chairman of the Board, with Mark Cornelius as 1st Vice President, Craig Powers as 2nd Vice President, and Damien Monaghan as 3rd Vice President; Meredith Truitt is Secretary and Casey Clark is Treasurer. The director seats go to Mark Drozdov, Carey Vermeulen, Darren Hudema, Leslie Anderson, Howard Wolf, Holly Burns, Jack Freedman, Quintis Millsaps, and Mehmet Ucar, with Darrell Paulson as Honorary Director and Tony Macaluso as Special Advisor. “Together, we will build on the accomplishments of the past year and continue advancing the initiatives launched during my first year in this role,” Tole said. The IICRC is the ANSI-accredited standards body that credentials individuals in more than 25 categories across the inspection, cleaning, and restoration industries, in more than 50 countries.
Why it matters: This board steers the standards and certifications your techs carry and your scopes get judged against. Who holds the vice-president seats this year is a fair preview of where the standards arguments will be fought next year.
Follow the loss before you add a service: Kevin Coy’s expansion test
In his Business Builder column in R&R Magazine (Tuesday, Oct 27), Kevin Coy argues the first question about a new service is not “what equipment do I need?” but “does this service belong in my business?” His exercise is to follow the loss: take your last 20 or 30 significant fire losses and total where the money actually went — structure, reconstruction, hard contents, textiles, storage, specialty work referred out — and ask how much revenue passed through losses you already had into somebody else’s company. Then do the harder math: finding $500,000 of potential revenue does not make a department, because equipment is only one component next to space, staff, training, utilization, and working capital. Every service, Coy says, should be run as its own business, with its own capture rate, margin, break-even volume, and manager — and the legitimate choices are four: build it, buy it, partner for it, or don’t do it. “A six-figure capability sitting idle isn’t an asset. It’s an expensive reminder that capacity and demand are not the same thing.” A part two, on what adding a fire restoration service really costs, is promised.
Why it matters: Most expansion decisions get made at a trade-show demo, priced on the machine. Coy’s test prices them on utilization and break-even volume from losses already in your building — the order that keeps a new service from taxing the profitable core.
First Onsite hires a clinician-safety director for its healthcare practice
First Onsite Property Restoration appointed Christopher Kobus as Director of Healthcare Quality and Compliance, in an announcement published by C&R Magazine (Tuesday, Oct 27). Kobus’s path is unusual for this industry: he began as a firefighter-paramedic, became a registered nurse, worked clinical nursing, occupational health, and healthcare quality and safety, and most recently served as Safety Officer for the University of Washington Medical Centers. He is a faculty member of the American Society for Healthcare Engineering (ASHE) and a co-author of the ASHE ICRA 2.0 Process Guide and Certification Exam. In the new role he will support First Onsite’s healthcare practice nationally — training its teams and clients on infection prevention and ICRA 2.0, advising on complex restoration and construction projects, and working on preparedness. “Healthcare environments require a different level of awareness and planning because the decisions we make can directly affect patient and staff safety,” Kobus said. “Monitoring and controlling the environment every day is how we protect them.”
Why it matters: Healthcare restoration is infection-control work with a construction schedule attached. A national restorer putting an ICRA 2.0 co-author at director level is a signal of where the compliance bar for hospital work is heading — and what smaller shops will be measured against.
Beyond the Burn: four fire practitioners on what comes after the fire
The newest episode of R&R Magazine’s Ask the Expert podcast (Wednesday, Oct 28) carries on a conversation that started at The Experience in Las Vegas. Kevin Coy, David Hart, David Hodge, and Tom McArdle work through the questions that decide a fire job’s outcome: how contamination is assessed, where cleaning ends and decontamination begins, how contents restoration fits the sequence, and — running under all of it — why understanding fire science is crucial rather than optional. The episode’s stated ground also covers worker safety, testing, and verification: the steps that turn “we cleaned it” into a result someone else can check.
Why it matters: Fire work is separating into two camps — companies that can explain and verify the difference between cleaning and decontamination, and companies that price both the same. Four practitioners spending an hour on that line is worth an operator’s drive time.
Technology’s real job on a fire loss is communication, DocuSketch’s Todd Sangid argues
In the final installment of this month’s Technical Tip Tuesday series in R&R Magazine (Tuesday, Oct 27) — a series sponsored by DocuSketch — Todd Sangid, the company’s Enterprise Solutions Consultant, argues technology in fire restoration should be viewed as more than a way to work faster. Used properly, he says, it produces more accurate documentation, communicates the scope of a loss better, and tells the complete story of what occurred. His worked example is not about speed at all: a homeowner who was not emotionally ready to re-enter their fire-damaged home was walked through the property using 360 documentation, so the team could identify valuable and sentimental belongings together and explain what could and could not be salvaged — without the homeowner stepping back inside.
Why it matters: Documentation tools are usually sold on minutes saved per room. Sangid’s case, from the vendor’s own seat, is that the same capture buys trust: a homeowner who can see the loss clearly argues less about the scope built on it.
A free after-hours handoff test: who confirmed they own the inquiry?
Phoenix Digital Growth published a free, ungated guide for independent water and fire restoration owners who want to test what happens to a direct emergency inquiry after hours, R&R Magazine reported (Tuesday, Oct 27) — no email address, registration, or download required. The guide carries three usable pieces: a handoff assignment template naming who owns the phone for a given shift, who the backup is, and who must confirm they have accepted responsibility for an inquiry; an acceptance test for the path that fails when nobody confirms, run as an identified test call rather than a fabricated emergency; and six questions to ask an answering service before signing, covering its answer-time commitment and what it does when it misses, who gets escalated to and who confirms acceptance, whether you control the script, whether first-response time per inquiry is visible without asking, what gets written back to the CRM and what happens when that write fails, and whether the provider will fail on purpose during a trial. The guide also states the condition under which buying an answering service is the whole fix and Phoenix — which sells paid implementation of after-hours workflows, and is not itself an answering service — is not needed.
Why it matters: After-hours is where the highest-intent inquiries in this business go to die, and the failure is usually not the answer — it’s the acceptance. This test measures the confirmation, which is the step most shops have never actually watched happen.
Quiet on the wires
Checked and quiet in the last 24 hours: Encircle, Kahi, Albiware and Alex Duta, ATI Restoration, Paul Davis, ARC Facilities, Floodlight Group, and the Restoration Industry Association posted nothing substantive, and BELFOR’s social pass came back empty. SERVPRO’s in-window posts were local franchise walkthroughs and ads plus one corporate brand commercial; PuroClean surfaced nothing new. The DYOJO published nothing with a verifiable date. The Restoration Today, Phil & Michelle’s Happy Hour, Restoration Rundown, and Albi After Hours podcasts released no new episodes in the window. The Threads sweep returned vintage-aircraft restoration only, the Facebook newsfeed pass was personal only, and the LinkedIn sweep returned a company-page shell with no verifiable in-window news. The Roundup prints what ran.
The Roundup sweeps a standing watchlist of restoration companies, voices, trade press, and podcasts. The full source list, the bench of candidates, and every past edition live on the Restoration Roundup home page. Should be on this list? The watchlist grows from what the industry itself amplifies — if a voice is missing, tell us.
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