What the letters
on the card mean
Restoration is a certified trade, and the letters on a technician’s card describe specific training that almost nobody has ever had explained to them.
The people who come to the building
A restoration crew is not one job. On a straightforward water loss it is usually a lead technician who does the assessment and the moisture mapping, one or two technicians doing extraction, containment and equipment placement, and an estimator writing the file for the insurance company.
On a larger loss there is a project manager holding the schedule together, and on a fire or a sewage job there are people whose training is specific to that work.
[CLIENT SLOT: the crew roster. For each person the branch wants listed, supply the name, the role, the certifications actually held, and a photograph the person has agreed to have published. Individual profiles will not be written without all four, because a page of invented staff is discovered the first time a customer meets the real crew.]
The question worth asking
Not how long somebody has been doing this. Ask what they are certified in, and what they intend to measure before they open anything. The expensive mistakes in restoration are almost all made in the first two hours, by somebody who did not measure.
What each certification covers
The IICRC is the standards body this trade works to, and it writes the documents that define what drying a building properly actually consists of. Its certifications are earned by course and examination, and each one is narrow on purpose. A company describing itself as certified without naming which ones is telling you very little.
- WRT
Water Damage Restoration Technician
The foundation certification for water work. Covers the categories and classes of water loss, how moisture moves through building materials, how to read a meter and interpret what it says, and how to build a drying plan that can be verified rather than assumed.
- ASD
Applied Structural Drying
The step that separates drying a room from drying a structure. Covers psychrometrics, the physics of how air, moisture and temperature interact, and how to place and size equipment so that a wall cavity or a floor assembly actually dries instead of just feeling dry on the surface.
- AMRT
Applied Microbial Remediation Technician
Mold work. Covers containment so that disturbing growth does not distribute it through the rest of the building, negative air and filtration, what can be cleaned and what has to be removed, and how remediation is verified at the end.
- FSRT
Fire and Smoke Restoration Technician
Fire work, which is largely a chemistry problem. Different fuels produce different residues, and the residue decides the cleaning method. Covers smoke behaviour, corrosion of metals and electronics after a fire, and odour that comes from source material rather than from the air.
- OCT
Odor Control Technician
Odour as a technical problem rather than a masking problem. The principle is that odour is caused by source material, so the source is removed first and the air is treated afterwards. A job that reverses that order smells fine for a fortnight.
- CDS
Commercial Drying Specialist
Drying at building scale, where the problem is as much logistics as physics: multi-storey structures, occupied premises that have to keep running, and equipment loads that a normal electrical supply cannot carry.
[CLIENT SLOT: which of these certifications the branch’s technicians currently hold, and how many people hold each. This is a checkable claim, so it will only be published from what the branch confirms.]
The expensive mistakes in restoration are almost all made in the first two hours, by somebody who did not measure.
Why any of this matters to you
- 01
Untrained drying leaves the cavity
The wall cavity, the space under the cabinet kickboard and the underside of the flooring stay wet, and none of it is apparent until it is a different problem.
- 02
Untrained mold work spreads it
Opening a contaminated wall without containment turns a problem in one room into a problem in five. Containment and negative air are the whole method, and they are the part that gets skipped.
- 03
Undocumented work stalls claims
A crew that does not take daily readings produces a file the adjuster cannot approve. The homeowner finds out weeks later, when the money does not move and nobody can say why.
What you can check yourself
Restoration and reconstruction work in Arizona is regulated, and contractors performing work above the statutory threshold are licensed by the Arizona Registrar of Contractors. A licence number can be looked up on the Registrar’s own website, along with the licence status and any complaint history, and that lookup is free and takes about a minute.
It is a reasonable thing to do before letting anybody open a wall, and no honest contractor minds being asked. What customers have said is worth rather less by comparison, and that page says so itself.
What will you
measure first?
Answered by a person, 24 hours a day, every day of the year