Testimonials

At around ten-thirty on the night of 30th January 2004, the Thorntons Recycling centre in Ballyfermot, Dublin, which handles over 30% of the capitalís domestic waste, caught fire. The blaze, which was attended by up to 11 fire brigade units, burned for hours and left the recycling plant inoperable.

Under similar circumstances most enterprises could be forgiven for putting their financial loss at the top of the agenda the following day But or Thorntons, continuity of service to their clients was the only priority. And as it turned out, using an experienced firm of loss assessors was the key to making it happen.

"Loss assessing is all about professionalism and attention to detail," says Neal Herr, Managing Director of Property Claims Direct, the company that assisted Thorntons. "It's not about fighting for our clients against insurance companies, as some people think. Itís about working with both to find the right solution."

The Thorntons fire is a classic example of this spirit of cooperation. "The thing for Thorntons was to get their plant up and running again and more importantly, to keep doing business," says Herr. "We organised teams of contractors to work on reconstruction 12 hours a day, seven days a week. It was a huge operation, but the site was 80% operational within three weeks."

PCD, which is part of the Bruce Shaw Group, Ireland's largest firm of quantity surveyors and project managers, places great emphasis on the engineering/ surveying expertise of its employees. Its loss assessors are generally civil engineers and building surveyors, who also hold professional insurance qualifications, such as the Insurance Institute of Irelandís Certificate of Insurance Practice.

"Our philosophy is to combine professional qualifications in the building industry with professional qualifications in the insurance industry, in order to give our clients the most professional all round service available," says Herr.

In the case of the Thorntons fire, this paid off for everyone concerned. PCD were able to identify that the fast tracking of Thorntonís reconstruction work would be covered under the Business Interruption clause of their contract. "We had contractors working round the clock, safe in the knowledge that the additional expense would be covered by Thorntonís insurance. This should also produce significant savings for the insurance company, because the construction costs, even with the overtime, were much lower than a claim for loss of earnings would have been if the centre had been off line for two to three months."

Naturally, Thorntons are pleased too. "I'm delighted with the advice we received from PCD and the excellent level of support received from FBD, our insurers. The Thorntons management team, staff and family also played a key role in the expeditious resumption of services at the Killeen Road site," says Padraig Thornton, C.E.O. of Thorntons Recycling. "All were extremely professional and helped us to fast-track getting our plant up and running again, and most importantly, to retain our customer base."

Crucially, for a recycling plant that handles in excess of 250,000 tonnes of material per annum, what could have turned into a major crisis passed off instead as little more than a minor drama.