Recovery by the book
December 1st 2007 Working overtime throughout the summer floods,Belfor says its access to specialist technical labour, document drying equipment and priority response service helped organisations get back to business as normal as rapidly as possible
Belfor has been responding to fires, floods and explosions, large or small, residential or commercial for over 30 years via response centres throughout the UK and Ireland. In that time we have helped many household names recover, including high street retailers, supermarket chains, fast food restaurants, international hotels, financial institutions as well as manufacturing conglomerates and pharmaceutical giants.
Belfor works with most of the major loss adjusters and in the case of residential work are appointed directly by insurers to ensure affected homes and businesses get back to normal as soon as possible.
Following the recent widespread flooding throughout June and July, the company had to work round the clock to cope with the influx of jobs, both in residential and commercial properties.
The unprecedented flooding, the likes of which have never been seen before, meant handling residential jobs at 430 per cent and commercial jobs at over 200 per cent of the normal workload.At the height of the flooding in Doncaster and Hull new instructions were being handled at 15 times the normal rate.
According to the company, in this situation one its key advantages is being part of a global company and therefore able to call on its European sister companies for assistance in providing specialist technical labour, enabling the unprecedented demand for specialist mechanical, electronic and document restoration skills to be met.
In August 2007, due to the volume of document drying required Belfor shipped in a 'Mobile Thermal Vacuum Freezer Drying Unit' from Canada.These are thought to be the biggest specialist document drying units in the world, freeze-drying approximately 50 cubic meters per batch.This unit has helped BELFOR enormously in the restoration of important documents for businesses hit by the flooding around the UK.
Empty, the unit weighs 23 tonnes, and freezes to -51°C inside.
Vacuum freeze-drying is the process of drying frozen materials by sublimation and desorption at low pressure and at sub zero temperatures.Heat is then applied to the paper while in a sub zero vacuum which accelerates the rate of sublimation.The moisture, which was contained in the paper, is drawn out and frozen to the walls of the unit.
Normal moisture content in paper ranges from four to six per cent and many conservators recommend that moisture in paper should not exceed seven per cent.The Mobile Thermal Vacuum Freezer Drying Unit is capable of reducing the moisture content of documents back to their original state.The entire process from start to finish can take 7-10 days – much quicker than some of the more traditional methods and delivering excellent results, according to the company.
Belfor says its priority response service, Red Alert, has been a key advantage to many businesses around the UK during the summer and will continue to help businesses recover quickly and efficiently throughout the winter months. It provides a priority response service which integrates with your company's own emergency response procedures ensuring that you are prepared if the worst happens.With guaranteed response times, damage assessment and mitigation measures can be carried out immediately thereby reducing secondary damage to buildings and contents, speeding up the recovery process and getting businesses back to normality. More articles from Belfor: | 
