David Mazur, President, Ultrasonics International Inc./Fireline, has been involved in contents restoration since 1988. But while much of his experience has involved cleaning contents, it’s not hard to see what his passion is regarding contents restoration – training.

“I love this part of it,” Mazur says. “Training is everything. I think a lot of people have gone out and bought equipment, because everyone is selling equipment as the answer. It’s not – the answer is training. So we look at equipment like this: No matter who’s equipment, it’s 20% of the equation – it’s not the answer.”

That’s part of the reason why Fireline Training Centers emerged about four years ago. As Mazur notes, while the main focus of many companies was on building and mitigation, contents has historically been an afterthought, something that was done because it had to be done. For that reason, the contents division of many of these companies were operating inefficiently, often with an unsatisfactory end result.

“If you do it right and you implement it right and you have a system and a strategy, there’s good profitability in it,” Mazur says. “People realize that.”

Today, Fireline’s training center has three full-time instructors, up to three part-time instructors and is soon to open an 8,000 square-foot training center which will be known as the Fireline Contents Division Development Center.

So just what makes good contents restoration training? Mazur says programs should be designed for both upper management and techs and combine classroom and hands-on learning. Pack-outs, invoicing, Xactimate, documentation standards, software, correlation of inventory, customer service skills and more are all things that should be covered.

“It’s not just ‘How do I clean a dish?’ It’s how do I wrap, pack, identify, charge for that process and follow up to make sure it’s done correctly,” Mazur says.

 “A lot of people have gone and signed up for a course and they’ve gone and they remember one or two things. They forget – they don’t implement. A true training program that’s of any value has got not only to provide the information, but the implementation procedures.”