INC'D - Restoration Executive Search

01·The Sector

Property restoration is not a contracting business with insurance exposure. It is an insurance-services business with a contracting wrapper - and the distinction determines everything about how you value it, operate it, and lead it.

The January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires generated $40 to $41 billion in insured losses from a single event - larger than the entire annual US mitigation services industry. US insured catastrophe losses reached $88 to $103 billion in 2025, the sixth consecutive year above $100 billion globally. Climate Central counted 23 billion-dollar US events in 2025, the third-highest year on record, with the average time between billion-dollar disasters now compressed to ten days. The US averaged three billion-dollar disasters annually in the 1980s. It averaged 19 in the last decade. Restoration revenue is a derivative of this loss machine - and the machine is accelerating.

The economics that matter are not at the headline market level. Water-damage mitigation runs 70 to 80 per cent gross margins because the work is equipment-intensive - dehumidifiers, air movers, thermal imaging - with low direct labor. Mould remediation follows at 40 to 50 per cent. Fire and smoke remediation at 25 to 30 per cent. Reconstruction at 10 to 15 per cent as materials pass through at thin markup. Company-level EBITDA for established full-service firms clusters at 10 to 20 per cent, with top-quartile platforms reaching 20 to 25 per cent - typically those with water-mitigation revenue above 60 per cent of mix and exclusive Direct Repair Program relationships with carriers. Buyers systematically pay more for programmatic, TPA-fed revenue than for CAT-surge revenue. A contractor whose book is 70 per cent preferred-vendor DRP work for State Farm, Allstate, or Travelers - routed through Contractor Connection, Alacrity, or Sedgwick - trades at a material premium because the volume smooths hurricane cycles. A pure CAT chaser with one blockbuster quarter every three years trades at a discount because EBITDA is unhedgeable. This is the single most important valuation lens in the sector.

The consolidation layer has matured rapidly. BELFOR Holdings - American Securities-backed since 2019 - cleared $2.6 billion in 2024 gross sales across 372,296 jobs. Servpro has been Blackstone Core Private Equity's since March 2019. Trivest's HighGround platform was sold to Knox Lane in March 2025 after a 12-times revenue increase over five years through 13 add-on acquisitions. Morgan Stanley Capital Partners acquired American Restoration from Soundcore Capital in July 2024 after an eight-brand rollup. Osceola Capital launched Fortify Restoration in July 2025. The 2020 to 2023 thesis - buy any restoration contractor, layer add-ons, exit at a higher multiple - is narrowing to something more specific: acquire mitigation-heavy platforms with TPA relationships at five to seven times EBITDA, drive to $50 to $100 million revenue via eight to twelve tuck-ins in adjacent markets, exit at seven to ten times. The playbook is validated. The leadership to execute it remains the constraint.

The TPA preferred-vendor seat

Contractor Connection operates a network of 5,500 to 6,000 vetted contractors serving seven of the top ten US insurers. Alacrity covers approximately 99 per cent of the US population through its AlacNet platform. Sedgwick manages 2,000 property contractor locations. SLA architecture is uniform across all vendors: 24-hour policyholder first-contact, 24 to 72-hour on-site inspection, three to seven-day initial estimate, and single-assignment routing. Contractors trade margin compression for volume predictability. Owning a DRP-anchored book of business is defensively valuable. Building one from scratch is nearly impossible. The PE-backed platform that already holds preferred-vendor seats is not competing for work - it is receiving it.

02·The Numbers

THE STRUCTURAL DEMAND

$103B

US insured catastrophe losses in 2025. 23 billion-dollar events. Average time between disasters compressed to ten days. The demand driver is structural, not cyclical.

Catastrophe frequency at this level changes the planning horizon. Platforms still scaling for normal-year demand are unprepared for the surge weeks that drive the year. The operations leader who built mobile crew deployment before the storm hits is the rarest asset in the trade.

THE MIX QUESTION

70-80%

Gross margins on water-damage mitigation - the highest in any residential service trade. Mitigation-heavy platforms command a 30-50% EBITDA-multiple premium over rebuild-heavy peers.

Mitigation runs at margins rebuild work cannot match. Platforms still revenue-weighted toward rebuild are valued lower at exit, regardless of growth. Repositioning the mix is a multi-year operational shift led by procurement, scheduling and technician training together.

THE PLAYBOOK

12×

Revenue increase at Trivest's HighGround platform over five years through 13 add-on acquisitions before Knox Lane's acquisition in March 2025. The mitigation roll-up playbook is validated.

Twelve times revenue growth in five years through thirteen acquisitions is the validated playbook. The constraint is not deal flow or capital. It is the leadership pool capable of executing thirteen integrations without losing the mitigation discipline that drove the multiple in the first place.

03·The Brief

Restoration revenue is not earned the way every other trade earns it. It is allocated - by TPAs, by carriers, by preferred-vendor networks that decide which contractor gets the call before the homeowner does.

Xactimate - Verisk's estimating platform, used by carriers to set what they will pay for every line item of every claim - is effectively a tax on the industry, not a competitive lever. Verisk announced a $2.35 billion deal to acquire AccuLynx in July 2025 - terminated in December 2025 after FTC review delays, with AccuLynx contesting the termination. The attempted vertical integration of the dominant estimating platform with the dominant contractor software signals where the network is heading regardless. Verisk also launched XactAI in 2025 for automated photo labelling, pricing, and assignment summaries. The carrier already owns the pricing. Operators win on field-documentation quality, cycle-time management, and Xactimate compliance - not on pricing sophistication. PE should underwrite restoration targets on EBITDA quality versus Xactimate, not on aspirational margin expansion from pricing. The platforms that understand this fundamental reality operate at a structural advantage over the ones still trying to out-estimate the network.

The insurance dynamics deteriorating in the highest-demand markets are the sector's most underappreciated risk. California's FAIR Plan exposure reached approximately $5.9 billion on the Palisades fire and $1.8 billion on the Eaton fire in 2025 alone. Non-renewal expansion in California, Florida, and Louisiana is reducing insured exposure in precisely the counties with the highest restoration demand - creating a paradoxical demand squeeze where the disaster frequency is rising and the insured pool funding restoration claims is shrinking simultaneously. The CEO and CFO of a PE-backed restoration platform must understand insurance market dynamics at a level that no executive in HVAC, electrical, or plumbing is required to develop. The carrier pulling out of a market is not just a macroeconomic news item - it is a direct reduction in the addressable TPA volume that the platform's preferred-vendor relationships will generate.

Restoration is four overlapping businesses in one P&L - and the leadership challenge is managing all four without optimising one at the expense of the others. Water-damage mitigation: equipment-intensive, 70 to 80 per cent gross margins, recurring, the asset PE is actually buying. Mould remediation: 40 to 50 per cent margins, regulated state-by-state, a compliance and technical capability that independent operators frequently lack. Fire and smoke: 25 to 30 per cent margins, high-ticket, emotionally intense customer relationships where the technician enters a family's home at the worst moment of their year. Reconstruction: 10 to 15 per cent margins, project-based, general-contractor discipline, a completely different P&L management model. The VP of Operations who excels at mitigation dispatch and equipment management is not the same executive who can manage a multi-phase commercial rebuild. The platform CEO who does not explicitly manage this internal tension ends up with a business optimised for one segment and underperforming in the rest.

Where these searches break down

Placing a CEO from construction or general contracting who does not understand TPA preferred-vendor dynamics - the revenue allocation model in restoration is fundamentally different from any bid-based or marketing-driven trade, and executives without carrier relationship management experience misread both the competitive landscape and the customer acquisition model
Hiring a CFO who cannot model CAT-to-programmatic revenue mix as the primary valuation lever - the financial architecture of a PE-backed restoration platform requires understanding why a 70 per cent DRP book trades at a premium to a 30 per cent DRP book, and building the reporting that tracks that mix as an EBITDA driver in real time
Underestimating the insurance market knowledge requirement - a VP of Business Development in restoration must understand carrier appetite, TPA network membership criteria, SLA compliance scoring, and how carrier non-renewals in high-CAT markets affect forward revenue. Most commercial development executives from adjacent trades do not have this fluency
Treating mitigation, remediation, and reconstruction as one operational model - the dispatch and equipment management discipline of water mitigation is categorically different from the project management and GC coordination of reconstruction. Platforms that run both through one operations leader typically underperform in both segments.

What we bring to it

We understand the TPA preferred-vendor seat as the primary business development asset - and we know which business development leaders have the carrier relationship depth, SLA compliance history, and network management experience to protect and expand a DRP book, not just describe one
We have mapped the CFOs who can model the CAT-to-programmatic revenue split, track Xactimate compliance as a margin variable, and build the EBITDA bridge that translates mitigation revenue mix shifts into sponsor-level valuation implications
We know the difference between an operations leader who has managed water-mitigation equipment deployment at scale and one who has managed reconstruction project coordination - and we know which platforms need one, both, or the rare executive who has genuinely run both
We track the operators being built inside BELFOR, Servpro, and ATI who understand that restoration is an insurance-services business first and are ready to run a platform of their own.

04·Roles We Place

Roles We Place

TPA relationships are the moat. The leaders who build them are a small, known group. Restoration placements require sector-specific experience in almost every function. We know who has it and where they are.

CEO / Platform President

Leads a mitigation-heavy platform where the primary value creation lever is not revenue acquisition but revenue mix - building programmatic DRP volume to above 60 per cent of mix while managing CAT-surge capacity without letting storm revenue inflate EBITDA in ways that create underwriting problems at exit. Sets acquisition pace at eight to twelve tuck-ins per geographic cluster, manages TPA network relationships at the executive level, and understands that the Trivest-HighGround and ATI-TSG playbooks are the validated benchmarks. Has likely run a restoration or insurance-adjacent services business - not a construction or project-based trade.

Chief Financial Officer

Models the CAT-to-programmatic revenue split as the primary valuation driver in every sponsor report. Tracks Xactimate compliance as a margin variable - understanding that the gap between what the carrier approves and what the contractor invoices is the key job-level economics indicator. Manages the four-stream gross margin architecture simultaneously: mitigation at 70 to 80 per cent, mould at 40 to 50 per cent, fire and smoke at 25 to 30 per cent, reconstruction at 10 to 15 per cent. Builds acquisition accounting infrastructure that normalises acquired company financials from informal job-tracking onto clean monthly close within 90 days.

VP of Operations

Manages the mitigation deployment infrastructure - equipment fleet, technician dispatch, 24-hour first-contact SLA compliance, cycle-time management, and documentation quality against Xactimate line items. Oversees the field-documentation technology stack - Matterport, DocuSketch, CompanyCam, Encircle - that determines whether claims are paid in full or supplemented. The TPA carrier scorecard measures response time, documentation quality, customer satisfaction, and supplement rate. Every metric on that scorecard is a VP of Operations responsibility. Also manages the reconstruction P&L with an entirely different discipline: project scheduling, GC coordination, subcontractor management, multi-phase job costing.

General Manager

Branch or regional P&L owner. $15M-$80M revenue. Manages mitigation crews, reconstruction teams, and TPA/carrier relationships. The GM who understands the difference between emergency mitigation economics and reconstruction project margins - and can manage both simultaneously - is the rarest profile in the sector.

VP of Business Development

The most strategically distinct role in restoration relative to every other trade vertical. Manages TPA preferred-vendor relationships with Contractor Connection, Alacrity, and Sedgwick - understanding that these networks allocate insurance dollars to vetted contractors based on SLA compliance scoring, geographic coverage, capacity, and relationship depth. Maintains carrier direct-relationship programs with State Farm, Allstate, Travelers, and regional carriers. Develops commercial large-loss relationships with property managers, facility directors, and corporate accounts. Understands carrier appetite changes - non-renewals in California and Florida directly affect which geographies the platform should be building capacity in and which it should be managing down.

Director of Technical Services

Restoration's version of the fire safety Director of Engineering - the platform's technical authority on IICRC standards, mould remediation protocols, asbestos and lead abatement compliance, fire damage chemistry, and the state-by-state regulatory variation in mould remediation licensing. Illinois SB 1087 Mold Remediation Registration Act is one of a growing number of state-specific regulations that create compliance requirements independent operators frequently fail. The Technical Director ensures the platform's documentation, protocols, and technician training meet carrier and regulatory standards in every operating geography - and that Xactimate line-item compliance is accurate enough to pass carrier audit without triggering payment disputes.

VP of Commercial Large-Loss

Leads the commercial division for jobs above the $50,000 large-loss threshold - the hospital wings, data centres, industrial facilities, and multi-family complexes where a single claim can reach seven or eight figures. Manages the consultative sales process into property managers, facilities directors, and corporate risk teams. Understands the lumpier revenue, longer cycle times, and higher complexity of commercial claims - and the fundamentally different P&L discipline required to estimate, execute, and invoice a $2 million commercial remediation versus a $3,500 residential water-damage job. This executive typically comes from an insurance consulting or commercial construction background rather than residential restoration.

A sample of the senior leadership positions we place across this vertical. Not an exhaustive list - if the role you need is not shown, reach out.