BACKGROUND

Recent work by the PIRC Definitions Committee has confirmed that there is a lack of market clarity relative to the treatment of restoration contractors' costs, specifically the concept of Overhead costs. Given that there is a near universally accepted market practice in the industry referred to as "Overhead and Profit", there is near equally universal confusion over what Overhead actually is, which creates confusion between market participants.  

As PIRC's mission is to be a place where "property insurance and restoration industry stakeholders come together for discussions, enhance understanding, heighten transparency, find common ground and communicate possible solutions and/or best practices to improve their industry", the PIRC body could attempt to bring some clarity and transparency to this issue for the benefit of all participants.

We are asking all stakeholders to participate in this short, comprehensive survey to gain insight into the current perspective of various restoration contractor costs from different vantage points.  There are no right or wrong answers.    

The survey is confidential.  While we will ask for your email address, this is largely to ensure the validity of your survey response, and your specific responses will be shared only with the PIRC Administrator. [Your answers will be aggregated with all other responses, and will not be identifiable to you. We will ask an initial segmentation question in order to gain further insight into the perspectives given.]  

YOU SHOULD ANSWER ALL QUESTIONS FROM YOUR SPECIFIC PERSPECTIVE.

Aggregated survey results will be shared with the PIRC body.

We hope that the survey is self-explanatory, but to perhaps provide a measure of clarity:

  * Always Billed and/or Paid are those costs that you believe should always be explicitly charged to the customer for the provision of services because they directly relate to that effort (whether through T&M rates or unit cost pricing.).

  * Probably Billed and/or Paid are those costs that you believe should probably be explicitly charged to the customer for the provision of services because they directly relate to that effort, but you can readily think of instances where this may not be the case.

  * Never Billed and/or Paid are those costs that you believe should not be charged for or paid for, neither through the "O" in O&P nor incorporated into unit cost pricing, even though they may be incurred.

  * Overhead Costs are those costs that you consider covered by the "O" in O&P. Check this box if you believe that a contractor is currently intended to be compensated for the identified cost through this percentage.

Another was to think about any of the identified costs is by asking the question: "If I, as a contractor, listed this cost as its own line item on a Time & Materials billing, would I get paid for it?", where the possible responses would be "Always", "Probably", Never", or "That's a cost of doing business."

Thank you for your participation.