Executive search for restoration businesses.
INC'D recruits senior leaders for PE-backed water, fire, mold and catastrophe restoration platforms.
Emergency response meets insurance process.
Restoration leadership must coordinate rapid mobilization, technician and subcontractor capacity, estimating, carrier and TPA relationships, job-cycle control and collections. Catastrophe work and daily local claims add different operating pressures.
We look for leaders who can create control without slowing the response that wins the work.
Roles we recruit.
What matters in the brief.
- Emergency response
- Daily claims and catastrophe mix
- Carrier and TPA relationships
- Estimating and job files
- Cycle time
- Working capital and collections
- Subcontractor capacity
- Branch integration
The market today.
Figures checked September 2026. Each links to its source.
US insured losses from natural catastrophes were about $100 billion in 2025, around 12% above the ten-year average. The Los Angeles wildfires were the largest single event, at about $41 billion.
Gallagher Re, via Artemis, 2026 ↗2025 was the sixth consecutive year in which global insured catastrophe losses exceeded $100 billion.
Gallagher Re, via Insurance Business, 2026 ↗Severe convective storms cost insurers $208 billion across 2023 to 2025, about 85% of it in the United States.
Gallagher Re, via Captive.com, 2026 ↗
Where restoration searches go wrong.
A CEO from general contracting
Most restoration work is allocated through insurers and the third-party administrators that route claims, rather than won by bidding. Leaders without insurer relationship experience often misread how the business actually wins work.
A CFO who cannot read the revenue mix
Buyers value steady, insurer-referred work more highly than one-off catastrophe surges. The CFO needs to track that mix month by month and explain what it means for the value of the business.
A business development leader without insurance fluency
The job is protecting and growing preferred-vendor relationships: meeting response times, passing insurer scorecards and following where insurers are expanding or pulling back.
Running four businesses as one
Water mitigation, mold remediation, fire and smoke work and reconstruction have different margins and different disciplines. One operations leader rarely runs all four well without the right support.
The roles, explained.
- CEO or President
- Grows the share of steady, insurer-referred work, manages surge capacity after major events and sets the pace of acquisitions. Usually comes from restoration or insurance-related services rather than construction.
- Chief Financial Officer
- Tracks the balance of catastrophe and referred revenue, measures how closely jobs match what insurers will pay and manages four service lines with very different margins. Has to bring acquired companies onto a clean monthly close quickly.
- VP of Operations
- Runs equipment, technician dispatch, response times and field documentation, the things insurers score contractors on. Also oversees reconstruction, which is a different, project-based discipline.
- General Manager
- Owns a branch or regional P&L across emergency work, rebuild work and insurer relationships.
- VP of Business Development
- Manages relationships with the insurers and administrators that route work, plus commercial clients such as property managers. Watches where insurers are writing and withdrawing cover, because that decides where to build capacity.
- Director of Technical Services
- The technical authority on industry standards, state-by-state mold and abatement rules, and documentation that holds up to insurer audit.
- VP of Commercial Large Loss
- Leads large commercial claims at sites such as hospitals, data centers and apartment complexes. A consultative, longer-cycle business that often draws leaders from insurance consulting or commercial construction.
What INC'D brings.
- We treat insurer and administrator relationships as the main source of growth, and we know which business development leaders can protect and grow them, not just describe them.
- We know the CFOs who can track the balance of catastrophe and referred work and explain what it means for the value of the business.
- We know the difference between an operations leader who has run water mitigation at scale and one who has run reconstruction, and which businesses need one, the other, or the rare leader who has done both.
- We follow the leaders developing inside the largest restoration companies who are ready to run a business of their own.
How INC'D searches this market.
We recruit restoration leaders against the balance of daily claims, catastrophe work, carrier relationships and local emergency response. Candidates must show control of estimating, job cycle, collections and capacity without slowing service. A typical shortlist contains three to five qualified leaders within two to four weeks of engagement.
How our executive search works →
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