Insurance issues delay R.I. rebuilding after Sandy

PREPARED FOR IT ALL: Matthew O. Davitt, president of Davitt Design Build, says that trying to prevent storm damage is like trying to “stop the tide from coming in.” / COURTESY DAVITT DESIGN BUILD INC.
PREPARED FOR IT ALL: Matthew O. Davitt, president of Davitt Design Build, says that trying to prevent storm damage is like trying to “stop the tide from coming in.” / COURTESY DAVITT DESIGN BUILD INC.

Since the remnants of Hurricane Sandy hit the Ocean State, Matthew O. Davitt and his staff of 16 have been busy helping property owners looking to rebuild homes damaged by the storm.
Davitt is the owner of Davitt Design Build Inc. and Property Restoration Services Inc., South Kingstown companies that specialize in coastal homes.
Since the storm, his team has been working closely with insurance adjusters to outline the scope of work for damaged properties. They are also in regular contact with town officials and agencies, such as the Coastal Resources Management Council, serving as a go-between for all parties and working to attain approval for client plans to rebuild. It’s slow work.
As of last week, Davitt had yet to get the go-ahead to rebuild on any local properties damaged by the storm that hit the Ocean State three months ago.

PBN: Hurricane Sandy was responsible for millions of dollars worth of damage in Rhode Island. Tell us about the range of projects your business has taken on as a result of the storm.
DAVITT: Property Reconstruction Services, or PROS, handles the reconstruction part of design losses, while Davitt Design Build handles the consulting. We are building consultants to insurance carriers who specialize in properties on the coast. We write the damage appraisals for the insurance carrier and in that we’ve seen everything from minimal damage where a dock or structure close to the water was taken down, or a beach walkover, all the way to flooding right through the existing houses where you have pretty much lower-level and first-level total losses.
PROS, handles property-reconstruction surfaces, which is where we do the insurance-reconstruction work. All we’ve done to date, because of waiting for projects to settle with insurance companies, has been shoring things up to make sure they’re not falling, or tarping to make sure they’re not flooding, but we have not started any rebuilding. Homeowners have their homeowners insurance or [are dealing with] FEMA for flooding, so the two of them have to sort out what part of the damage is flood-related and what is not. And that’s where we’re seeing kind of a bottleneck happening.
PBN: Where are most of your storm-related projects concentrated?
DAVITT: In Rhode Island, you see lots of damage in Narragansett, Charlestown and Westerly.

PBN: When rebuilding, are most clients looking to replicate the structures that were destroyed?
DAVITT: Because we specialize on the coast and kind of an upper-end market, [clients] tend to do two things. They tend to remodel, agreeing on the scope and what was there at the time off loss, or they’ll say, “Gee, we’d like to make that room bigger.” Most of these clients have the resources to work outside of the amount the insurance companies have agreed to cover. … They’ll request more preventative measures to make the damages not happen again.

PBN: Are there ways to prevent storm damages from occurring again?
DAVITT: It’s like trying to stop the tide from coming in. If it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen. If it’s a total loss, we can build the house a little higher or farther back if they have the land. If it’s a partial loss, there’s not a lot you can do, except install better structural tie downs, like hurricane ties, so that it’s less likely for a deck to be washed out from under a house.

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PBN: How do you think Sandy’s wake stacks up to that of storms of the past? DAVITT: We’re seeing more flood damage from this one, and I think that’s where a little of the bottleneck is because you have joint damage [between insurers].

PBN: What does that mean for your business?
DAVITT: It just means a slower turnaround … from time of loss to time of construction because there is more sorting out between carriers. It’s not a positive thing, it slows down production because we’re dealing with who’s going to cover what, and a lot of the homeowners are a little hesitant to pull the trigger before they know what’s covered and what’s not. There are certain things, like outside structures, that are not part of the house that were damaged by flooding, but they’re not covered by homeowners insurance because it’s flood-related.

PBN: What has the experience taught you?
DAVITT: We talk to the people more about our experience dealing with insurance losses through storms, and we talk to them about some of those preventative things that they can do above and beyond the building codes to try to prevent any losses down the road. You learn from every storm because you see what fails and what does not.

PBN: As a result, have any of your company’s responses to storm-recovery efforts changed?
DAVITT: What we’ve learned from the initial response is that if we know if a storm is coming, we now make contact with all of our clients. … A lot of our clients [reside] in New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts, but have houses in Rhode Island. So, we contact them and tell them the storm is coming, and we ask if there is anything we can do to help, like board up windows. •

INTERVIEW
Matthew O. Davitt
Position: President, Davitt Design Build Inc.
Background: Davitt founded Davitt Design Build Inc., a company that builds, renovates and restores homes, in 1982. In 1989, he started another company, Property Restoration Services Inc., which estimates insurance losses and works with insurance companies. Davitt is a certified master builder and is currently a local director of the Rhode Island Builders Association. In the past, he has served as a resource for publications interested in the design-build concept, building trends and economic conditions experienced by builders.
Education: Attended Springfield Technical Community College
First job: Summer construction on Block Island
Residence: South Kingstown
Age: 54

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