“You’ve gotta reinvent your business every five years – you have to. You’ve gotta be constantly reinventing or else you get stale and fall behind the times.”

That’s Jeff Petrucci, President, Bloomfield Construction (Bloomfield Hills, MI). Petrucci should know – he’s followed such a pattern in his 20 years as a business owner.

Bloomfield Construction began about two decades ago as a roofing and siding company. Five years later, it got into doing additions and remodeling work. Then, when the economy went south in the mid-2000s, it was time for another reinvention.

“I came across an estimate written by an insurance company for a particular job and I just started looking at the numbers and how they broke it all down,” Petrucci says. “It was a great fit for my company to start doing insurance repair work.

“Not only are we an insurance repair contractor, we’re a roofing company that got into doing this.”

Typically, it’s the roofing companies that come in after a storm and make any necessary repairs. However, most roofing companies don’t do any other restoration work, leaving the customer to find another contractor to do any water damage or other cleanup work. Not only does this leave customers hanging, but it also leaves potential dollars on the table, as Petrucci and many other companies around the nation have discovered.

In fact today, Petrucci says that restoration work has now surpassed his roofing business in dollar volume, a clear indication that the two professions can operate harmoniously under one company’s roof. The additional service allows Bloomfield Construction to be the one-stop shop in terms of disaster restoration when there’s storm damage to both the exterior and the interior of a home.

“When you’re tearing houses apart that are 100 years old, you learn way more than if you’re building houses from the ground up,” Petrucci says of his remodeling and renovating experience, a key reason behind Bloomfield Construction’s venture into restoration work. “You learn what’s leaking behind walls, what’s behind walls, what to look for, how many layers of things there are, why things leak. What causes water and how can you correct the problem so that it doesn’t happen again?”

A One-Stop Restoration Shop

Bloomfield Construction is just one venture that started primarily as a roofing company and branched off to include water damage restoration in its offerings. Another example is the OLNEYA Restoration Group (St. Louis, MO). Since its inception, the company has always performed 24/7 emergency services, such as tarping and repairing damaged roofs. Now the company is offering water damage restoration as a service.

Why? Because it makes sense.

“We’re merely broadening our service offerings to help our customers even more when dealing with storm and water damage to their businesses and homes,” says Crystal Anderson, OLNEYA owner. “Let’s say you have sustained storm damage to your roof during the night and a leak resulted, so you wake up not only to a hole in your roof, but a room full of water. (We) now have the capabilities to take care of the roof damage, as well as the resulting water damage, making it easier and less worrisome for the customer.

 “Whether a customer has a few missing shingles or a complete basement flooding, (we) have the capability to repair all of the damage.”