Commercial roofing
Emergency and storm roof response
Stop the water, document the damage properly for the carrier, and come back for the permanent repair — in that order.
- How it is priced
- Emergency call-out plus time and materials; permanent repair quoted separately
- Timeline
- Set in your written estimate, after the walk-through
- Who performs it
- NRBS crews, self-performed
Three priorities, in this order
One: stop the water. An active leak is doing damage every hour — to inventory, to interior finishes, to insulation, and to the deck. Temporary stabilisation is the correct response, and it is explicitly temporary: a patch, a tarp, a sealed termination, whatever stops water entering right now.
Two: document. Dated photographs of the damage and, where it can be determined, the cause — taken before any temporary work covers it up. This is the step most often skipped under pressure, and it is the one that determines whether an insurance claim is straightforward or a fight.
Three: quote the permanent repair. As scheduled work, in daylight, on a dry roof, at ordinary rates.
Why the permanent repair does not happen on the emergency visit
This is worth being blunt about, because the opposite is common practice.
Permanent repairs made in the dark, in weather, on a wet surface, under time pressure, are the repairs that fail. Membrane does not bond to a wet substrate. Sealants do not cure in the conditions that caused the call. A crew working at 2am on a roof they cannot properly see does not do their best detailing.
A contractor who offers a permanent fix during the storm is charging emergency rates for compromised work, and the repair will be back on the schedule inside two years.
Stabilise now. Repair properly later. That sequence produces a repair that holds.
The documentation carriers actually want
| Before anything is covered | Photographs of the damage and the visible cause, timestamped |
|---|---|
| Event record | Date and time of the weather event, and of the response |
| Work record | What temporary measures were installed, and where |
| Cause | Where it can be established — carriers distinguish storm damage from deferred maintenance |
| Follow-up | The quoted permanent repair, so the claim covers the actual restoration |
Claims are denied for missing documentation far more often than for the underlying facts. Ten minutes of photography on the emergency visit is the cheapest insurance in this scope.
Response commitments
We do not publish a response time on this page.
A published response time that is not backed by a specific agreement is a marketing figure, and an asset manager is right to be sceptical of one. Our response commitment is written into the agreement for each client, and it is a real commitment with a real consequence attached. See service commitments for how those are structured, and national accounts for portfolio-level response arrangements.
Also in commercial roofing
Specification
What we install, and to what standard.
Full specification
- First priority
- Stop water entering. Temporary, effective, and honest about being temporary.
- Second priority
- Documentation — dated photographs of the damage and the cause, before anything is covered
- Third priority
- A quoted permanent repair, made as scheduled work rather than in the dark and the rain
- Never
- A permanent repair sold as an emergency at emergency rates
Not in the scope
- Anything not written in the scope. Extra work found on site is raised as a written change order before it is done.
- First priority
- Stop water entering. Temporary, effective, and honest about being temporary.
- Second priority
- Documentation — dated photographs of the damage and the cause, before anything is covered
- Third priority
- A quoted permanent repair, made as scheduled work rather than in the dark and the rain
- Never
- A permanent repair sold as an emergency at emergency rates
Not in the scope
- Anything not written in the scope. Extra work found on site is raised as a written change order before it is done.
How the job runs
Walk-through
We walk the units or the roof, or work from the walk sheet you already have.
Written scope
A written scope and price before any work starts, priced as shown above.
The work
Our own crews do it, to the written scope. Anything extra is a written change order first.
Final walk-through
We walk it again with you and close out anything on the punch list.
Step one is your scope, as it already exists.
Request a bidPricing a whole community? Request a park-wide quote.
Common questions
W-9, written safety programme and certificates of insurance (GL and workers’ comp): being prepared. What is published so far is on vendor credentials.
Usually specified alongside
- RepairFind where the water is actually entering rather than where it is appearing, and repair that — because those are rarely the same place.
- Maintenance programsScheduled inspection and minor repair on the roofs that are still sound, which is the only thing that keeps a replacement list short.
- Commercial roofing overviewThe same crews, the same reporting and the same vendor file — applied to the commercial assets sitting in the same portfolio as your communities.
Where we perform emergency response
Self-performed crews based in Houston. Each city page carries local housing context.