The Core Problem
Every burned building has at least one owner — often a couple or multiple people — and most of those people have never been through a major construction project that involves their insurer, the city or county permit department, an engineering company, an architect, a general contractor, multiple subcontractors, a landscape company, PG&E, the weather, their mortgage company, and whatever else may be going on in the economy.
People are conditioned by consumer culture to expect fast results. You can have food within minutes of wanting it while driving, or order almost anything online and have it the same day or next day. Burned and water-damaged building recovery simply does not work that way.
TheThe First Three Months: Not Much Happens to the Building
Coast Construction cannot rebuild your building until two things are in place: the most complete insurer-approved funding is in place, and a building permit has been issued.
After you file your claim, the insurer dispatches an adjuster who will come and look at both your house and our scope of work and pricing (if we have one by then — many adjusters won't look at our work until they complete theirs).
Adjusters may challenge, defer, or exclude individual scope items during review, and those decisions can materially reduce what the insurer initially recognizes as necessary.
Our estimating focus is on completeness, which can increase cost above the adjuster's preliminary and likely less complete estimate.
After the adjuster has reviewed our documented reconstruction scope and pricing, the reconstruction package and pricing figures move through the insurance company's internal claims-review process — a process that can take months as each level reviews and audits the proposed total figure.
Why Insurers Are Slow
Your insurer is a large bureaucracy that is institutionally cautious about approving substantial payments. Large claims are therefore commonly reviewed at several levels before an adjuster is permitted to agree to the final reconstruction figure.
Building Permits
Coast can't legally start work without a building permit. We must obtain insurer-funded engineering drawings for submission to the building department for approval. Once approved, those drawings become the basis for the building permit required for the reconstruction work and guide the work we perform.
What year was your building built? Does it meet the current building code? The building department will insist that it does before we're done. Every building department we work with can take weeks or months to process permit applications. We work to compress this timeline wherever possible, but permitting remains one of the project variables that is largely outside our control.
Coast’s process prioritizes early insurer approval for engineering-plan funding, allowing the plan and permit process to move forward at the same time as the broader reconstruction funding review. We learned to do this to compress the wait time.
Project Kickoff and How Work Actually Happens
As a general contractor, we self-perform portions of projects and subcontract specialized trades — plumbing, electrical, drywall, and others — as appropriate to the project.
Coast and its subcontractors schedule work across multiple projects within defined project windows, rather than staffing every project continuously on a fixed daily schedule.
That means it is generally not practical to work on one building continuously from start to finish on an 8 a.m.–4 p.m., 40-hour work week. Crews are moved around as material deliveries, inspections, and scheduling allow. Subcontractors may leave a job site for days or weeks at a time. The bigger picture for Coast is whether the overall project remains on schedule.
Example: How Drywall Actually Works
Drywall installation happens in two stages: install and screw it to the framing, then stop and wait for inspection. Only then can the mud that covers the screws be applied.
The mud must then be applied in stages and allowed to dry before it can be sanded smooth. Depending on the jurisdiction and the work involved, additional inspections may also be required before the project can move to the next stage.
The drywall crew will therefore come and work on the house in chunks while rotating to other buildings — creating the impression that “nobody's at the house today” over and over.
But there is a reason for these gaps, and they are part of the normal project sequence.
If you call every time the project appears quiet, it can create unnecessary time-management friction during periods when the work is already moving through scheduling, inspections, material lead times, or other required steps.
Understand the process well enough to judge progress by the steps being completed, not only by visible activity at the property.
A contractor who understands the reconstruction, insurer-review, engineering, permitting, and funding sequence can often compress parts of the project from months to weeks.
Payment Timing
Keep in mind that Coast can't collect payment until each stage that triggers a payment is completed. Then we wait weeks or more for the insurer and/or mortgage company to release funds to the building owner, who must let payments clear their bank before they can pay us.
Coast is obligated to carry substantial project costs in this system, which is why we pay close attention to the timing of insurer and mortgage-company funding releases.
It takes a lot more time than most people imagine is reasonable, but reality requires that projects work this way.
Project Completion
Coast can't complete the project until our customer is satisfied that the project is done. Expect us to consult you to produce a final punch list of remaining tasks. You can help us by being organized and aware as we go into the final stretch — we want that list completed just as much as you do.
Let's build it back the right way — together. Questions at any point in the process are welcome and expected. An informed customer is a better partner in getting the project done correctly.
Independent Policyholder Resource
United Policyholders is a nonprofit that advocates for insurance policyholders and provides free educational resources for people navigating property claims. We recommend their materials as an independent resource with no affiliation to our company.
United Policyholders — uphelp.org →