This year, Jenkins Restorations celebrates 45 years in business. What started as primarily an architecture and general contracting firm in Sterling, VA, has since branched into a full-service restoration contractor with more than 350 employees and 26 locations across the U.S.

While their top three lines of service are general construction, water mitigation, and mold remediation, they do much more. Jenkins Restorations handles emergency board-ups, water mitigation, contents and structural cleaning, and GC work. Their sister company, Jenkins Environmental, handles mold remediation, biohazard cleanup, and trauma scene cleanup.

Set Apart

The team at Jenkins believes there are a few things that set them apart from other big players in the restoration space. First, they are not a franchised company. In fact, they are in the process of transitioning to employee ownership.

When it comes to being a non-franchise company, the Jenkins team believes that affords them the ability to streamline processes well. For example, David Ness, the Service Line Director of Water Mitigation and Emergency Services, is in charge of maintaining consistency within the water mitigation and emergency services departments across all 26 offices. This also allows for support across the various branches with personnel and equipment, which is very useful during CAT events.

“We strive for consistency of processes across branches and services lines,” Ness said. “We all use the same software, tools, and resources. Every service line has various monthly meetings to discuss the latest and greatest software, tools, resources, and key updates.”

Being a large company with multiple locations also makes it possible for Jenkins to effectively respond to CAT events. Recently, they started to build a National Response Team whose purpose is to travel to storm-impacted places both within and outside their normal coverage area. Their goal is to be able to respond to all catastrophic weather events, regardless of where they are in the country.

The other thing that sets Jenkins apart is their servant’s heart.

“Our servant’s attitude and the posi-tive impact that has on customer service are big differentiators,” said Ness. “We have an annual Servant’s Heart Award, and our mission statement is ‘Restoring property and lives with a ser-vant’s heart.’”

Key to Success

According to the Jenkins team, there are three main elements to running a large, multi-location restoration company successfully:

• Consistency: Every service line and branch need to provide a consistent product. An insurance carrier client, for example, should expect the same consistent product from their San Antonio, Texas location as in their Charlotte, North Carolina location.
• Expertise: Large, multi-location restoration companies must have expertise. This is necessary both from a corporate perspective and locally. Restoration projects require project managers that can coordinate a variety of services depending on the cause of loss and scope. In the same way, a large restoration firm needs to be able to manage, coordinate and communicate companywide about best practices, industry trends, and innovations, training and changes in policies and procedures.
• Communication: Communication is so important with multi-locations and multi-service. A large, multi-location restoration company needs to communicate across a variety of channels. Those include project manager to customer, branch manager to employees, and more.

JenkinsU

Pulling from the three requirements for success we just listed, Jenkins strives to educate its team on each of their service lines, and how they work. In turn, they aim to ensure every customer receives a truly full-service experience.

Educating their team became a whole lot easier with the creation of Jenkins University, which launched about five years ago. It is a combination of online training and in-person mentoring on everything restoration and customer-service related.

“JenkinsU has been a huge benefit to our employees because of the various insurance carrier/TPA requirements, software, tools, etc.,” said Ness. “We have not yet offered JenkinsU resources to other companies, but that is something we would consider in the future.”

For now, they do host CEC, IICRC, and other classes in their offices for other restoration companies, adjusters, and property managers.

Company Culture

The focus on education and development, as well as their mission statement, are some of the elements that have helped Jenkins build a positive company culture.

“Part of our culture at Jenkins is to have a family mentality within the company. While we do have separate branches, we strive to act as one team working toward a common goal and that is ‘To be the restoration firm of choice in existing and future markets while upholding Biblical values’,” explained Ness.

The Jenkins team is also involved in a variety of ways within the restoration industry as a whole – including being active members of the Restoration Industry Association and having people on staff with IICRC Master’s-level certifications who can help train and foster the next generation of restorers.