The argument on the job this month is not “do we pack out.” It is what the file will have to prove once S320 is an American National Standard.
On September 11, 2026, the Institute of Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration Certification (IICRC) opened public review for BSR/IICRC S320, Standard for Professional Assessment, Cleaning and Restoration of Contents. The window closes October 26, 2026 — more than 45 days. Consensus Body Chair Laurence Wymant and Vice-Chair John Pletcher lead the body. The draft is on the official IICRC S320 page at iicrc.org/s320; the same review dates appear on iicrc.org under Standards. The standard is in development and is not for purchase on the Standards Webstore.
Comment by October 26 or live under a book written by about 15 people on a consensus body. Inventory, chain of custody, salvage versus dispose, pack-out photos, and contents SLAs will get a citation handle. TPAs will quote it before your estimator does.
What S320 is — and what it is not
Per IICRC, S320 covers principles, methods, and processes to assess, inventory, pack-out, clean, restore, and enhance the appearance of contents. Contents means materials, furniture, fixtures, and equipment inside a building envelope — sometimes called personal property. BSR is the ANSI Board of Standards Review designation; new standards stay BSR/IICRC until ANSI approval.
Do not confuse the stack. S500 remains the water-damage restoration standard; its contents language is a chapter inside a water job, not a standalone contents book. ANSI/IICRC S700 is already published for professional fire and smoke damage restoration of the structure. BSR/IICRC S740, Restoration of Fire and Smoke Damaged Personal Items, is still in development — the fire/smoke contents cousin, not a substitute for S320’s broader contents scope. This article does not invent clause numbers from a draft you have not read. The draft lives on the IICRC S320 page for comment. Silence in public review is treated as acceptance of what is written.
Job-site fights this standard will name
Day one: do you inventory on site, or “list it at the warehouse”? Once a national standard exists, the file that starts with a photo of a taped box and no room-by-room list is the weak file. TPAs and carrier auditors will have a published method language to point at.
Category 3 porous: dispose versus “the homeowner wants it cleaned.” That fight already burns hours. A contents standard will not invent Category 3 — S500 already did — but it will give pack-out and cleaning decisions a separate citation path when someone second-guesses salvage.
Electronics, photos, and documents: high emotion, high claim value, easy to lose track of. Chain of custody matters more when a third-party contents vendor is on the ticket and your company still owns the customer relationship. Who signed the inventory? Who held the key to the vault? Who can prove the camera never left the sealed tote?
ALE clock versus pack-out delay: every day contents sit in a wet structure pushes additional living expense and mold risk. The estimator who priced pack-out for “tomorrow” and the PM who could not get a truck until Thursday already know this. A standard that spells methods for assessment and pack-out makes that delay easier to score against industry practice — for or against you.
Estimator: line items that will need a method note
Once a book exists, these lines stop being vibe and start needing a method note in the file:
- Inventory hours — on-site room-by-room versus warehouse receipt listing.
- Pack-out labor — crew size, stages, and why the day count moved.
- Warehouse days — storage start/stop tied to signed inventory, not a verbal “we’ll figure it out.”
- Cleaning method by material — porous, semi-porous, non-porous; electronics and media called out separately when scoped.
- Salvage versus dispose decisions — photo before disposal, reason code, who authorized.
You do not need invented unit prices from this article. You need the habit: every contents dollar on the estimate maps to a method you can defend when someone opens S320 after ANSI stamps it.
PM: photo protocol before the box is taped
Photo protocol before tape hits the box. Room context, then item or tote label, then sealed state. Signed inventory — homeowner or authorized party, date, page count. Who owns the key to the contents vault, and is that name on the job folder? If a vendor runs pack-out, your PM still owns the customer file; the vendor’s sheet is not a substitute for your chain of custody.
Assign one PM this week to read the pack-out and inventory sections of the public-review draft. Not the whole book in one sitting — those two sections. Bring three open jobs to the read and mark where your current photos and lists would fail a cold audit.
Shop owner: measure the vendor before ANSI does
If you do not run contents in-house, the vendor’s SOP is about to be measured against a national standard. Put that in the subcontract now — inventory format, photo requirements, chain-of-custody handoff, SLA clocks for pack-out and return — not after ANSI stamps S320 and a TPA starts quoting chapter language you never read.
Fifteen people on a consensus body will not know your shop. They will publish methods. Your subcontract either already matches the direction of that draft or it becomes a negotiation after the first denied contents line.
Action before October 26, 2026
- Download the draft from https://iicrc.org/s320/ (status: in development; not for purchase).
- Confirm the same Public Review window — September 11 through October 26, 2026 — on https://iicrc.org/category/standards/.
- Submit comments on the IICRC form before the deadline. Silence is acceptance.
- Assign one PM to read pack-out and inventory sections this week and bring findings to the Monday ops huddle.
- If you use a contents vendor, open the subcontract and add the inventory, photo, and SLA language you will want when S320 is an American National Standard.
Related stack for context only: S700 is already published for structural fire and smoke; S740 remains in development for fire/smoke damaged personal items. S320 is the broader contents assessment, cleaning, and restoration book under public review right now.
Sources: IICRC official S320 page (BSR/IICRC S320 Standard for Professional Assessment, Cleaning and Restoration of Contents; Public Review September 11 – October 26, 2026; Consensus Body Chair Laurence Wymant; Vice-Chair John Pletcher); IICRC Standards category listing the same window (retrieved September 17, 2026).