Smoke Damage to Vegetable Packing Equipment
Customer: Vegetable packing company
Location: Atherstone-on-Stour
Instructing Party: UK Loss Adjusting Company
Service Illustration:
Inventory checking, Contamination Profiling, Decontamination Scope of Works preparation
Background:
The Customer processes and packs vegetables for all of the major supermarket chains. The Customer suffered a very serious fire in November 2007 which caused fatalities and destroyed a considerable part of the premises.
Issues:
Because of the fatalities access to the site was very severely restricted for many weeks after the incident. Once access was allowed the Customer and the Loss Adjusters acting for the Customer’s Insurer urgently needed to establish what processing equipment, if any, had survived the fire and what condition it was in given the intensity of the fire and the delays.
DFA Activity:
DFA were commissioned to carry out a detailed inspection in the structurally sound but heavily smoke logged portion of the building to locate and identify equipment against an asset register. Visual inspection along with chemical swab testing for the presence of harmful chloride deposits was carried out on each piece of equipment found to determine the viability of economic reinstatement. Once fully catalogued a Scope of Works was prepared for the decontamination of the equipment.
Benefits of using DFA:
DFA were able to rapidly identify that a significant amount of the equipment was still intact and capable of economic restoration allowing the customer to plan for its re-use at alternative premises thus permitting a rapid resumption of their operations.
