How to Secure a Job Site Days Before a Forecast Storm

Why this matters

A forecast hurricane or major storm gives you something a sudden squall never does: days. Shops that use them well walk away from every open job leaving it closed, dry and inert, and come back to a list of repairs. Shops that keep working normally until the last afternoon come back to a half-torn-off roof that rained into the house for a day, a dumpster in the neighbor's pool, and a customer who spent the storm with the water off because the repipe was not finished. This card is the days-ahead plan. Deciding what to do when weather turns while a crew is on the roof is a different, faster call. See related: Weather Turns Mid-Job: Tarp Vs Stop Vs Finish Decision Tree.

The stand-down line comes first

Before anything else, set the time crews stop working outside, and plan every job backward from it. A workable shop default is to stand down 24 hours before the forecast arrival of tropical-storm-force winds (sustained 39 mph or more, the threshold the National Hurricane Center's arrival-time products use), and earlier if your county's evacuation order comes first, because crews have families and houses of their own. Forecast arrival times move, usually by hours, so the plan keeps a buffer rather than filling the time to the line.

Roof and ladder work ends sooner than ground work. A reasonable shop default is no roof or ladder work once sustained winds pass about 20 mph or gusts reach about 30, whatever the clock says, with fall protection as usual until then (on construction work, 29 CFR 1926.501(b)(13) sets the residential trigger at 6 feet). A lift's own wind limit, from its manufacturer, overrides any shop number. See related: What Wind Does to a Lift and When It Stops It.

The procedure, by hours before stand-down

1. At about 72 hours: list every open job by the state it would be left in. Walk the whole board, not just today's schedule, and write one line per job: open roof, open wall, system disconnected, open excavation, materials on site, rented equipment, dumpster. Why: the decision is not "can we finish" but "what does this house look like if we walk away tonight", and that question surfaces the jobs nobody is scheduled on this week. Skip it and the job you forgot, the one waiting on a part with its wall opened, is the one that floods.

2. Decide finish, close up, or leave as is, against your crew-hours. Count the crew-hours left before stand-down, keep a quarter of them unassigned for the forecast moving earlier and the job that takes longer than planned, and assign the rest. Two rules order the list. Anything that leaves a customer without water, heat, power or a usable toilet is finished or restored first. Anything that becomes a projectile or an open hole gets closed second. Finishing everything else comes last and only if hours remain. Why: the buffer is what keeps the plan intact when the forecast shifts, which it usually does. Skip it and you commit every crew to the line and leave nothing for the job that goes wrong.

3. Close roofs to a water barrier, not to a tarp. A partially stripped roof is dried in with underlayment to the high-wind installation standard, self-adhered membrane or fully fastened underlayment with cap fasteners, over the whole exposed deck, with every open penetration closed at that layer. Tarps held by sandbags or a few nails fail early in sustained wind and leave flapping sheets that rip what is under them. Bundles of shingles and tile come off the roof. Why: the underlayment is what will be left once wind takes anything loose. Skip it and the house takes water through every joint you opened.

4. Close walls and openings. Sheathing on any open framing, housewrap lapped and taped, window and door openings boarded with structural panel fastened into framing. An opening left in an exterior wall is a breach of the envelope, the same failure as a lost garage door. See related: Garage Doors and Openings in a Wind-Rated Envelope.

5. Leave every system working and closed. Every plumbing line capped is pressure-tested before the water is turned back on, standing clear of the cap as pressure comes up; every gas line capped and leak-tested to the code's test before gas is restored, with appliances relit only by a gas-qualified tech who checks draft and ignition; every electrical box closed with devices or blank covers and nothing energized that is not finished. This is the step that puts water, gas and power back into an unfinished job, so its check is the test, not a look. Where a system cannot be left working, the customer hears it in plain words in step 7, along with what to do instead.

6. Clear the site of things that fly or float. Lumber banded and stacked low, or taken back to the shop. Dumpsters emptied and pulled, or emptied and lidded where the hauler cannot pull them; haulers stop service ahead of a storm, so the request goes in at 72 hours, not 24. Portable toilets removed or strapped. Trailers, lifts and generators off site or lowered, stowed and secured per their manufacturers. Fuel containers removed, since floodwater floats them and spreads what is in them. Open trenches backfilled, or covered and barricaded, with pumps removed. Why: anything loose on a job site in 70 mph wind is a missile, and the liability for it lands on the shop that left it there.

7. Tell the customer exactly what state you are leaving. See the exchange below. Why: a customer who knows the roof is dried in, not finished, does not panic at the first drip around a patch, and a customer who knows the water heater is not connected boils water or stays elsewhere. Skip it and you get the call during the storm, when nobody can do anything.

8. At about 24 hours: final walk, photos, stand-down. One person walks every open job against its line from step 1, photographs each closed condition, and confirms the customer message went out. Then crews go home. Why: the photos are the record for the customer's insurance claim and yours. They prove what the site looked like before the storm, which is the first thing an adjuster asks.

The customer exchange

Said by phone, then confirmed in a text or email with the same facts.

OFFICE: Mr. Alvarez, it's Dana at the shop. With the
  storm Thursday we're not going to finish your roof
  before it hits. Tomorrow the crew dries in the back
  half with the storm-rated membrane, the same layer
  that goes under shingles. It will keep water out.
CUSTOMER: So it's not done.
OFFICE: Not done, but closed. You'll see black membrane
  instead of shingles on that half. If you see water
  inside, put a pan under it and text me a photo. We
  don't want anyone on a ladder in the wind.
CUSTOMER: When do you come back?
OFFICE: First dry day after the roads open. You're
  ahead of new calls because you're already a job.

Every line answers something the customer will otherwise wonder at 2 a.m.: what it looks like, whether it will leak, what to do if it does, and where they stand in the line afterward.

A worked example: four open jobs, three crews

A shop learns on Monday morning that hurricane-force winds are forecast for Thursday evening, with tropical-storm-force winds arriving Thursday about noon. Stand-down is therefore Wednesday at noon, 24 hours earlier. That leaves Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday morning: two full days of 8 crew-hours each plus half a day of 4, which is 20 hours per crew, times three crews, or 60 crew-hours.

The quarter held in reserve is 60 divided by 4, or 15 hours, so 45 crew-hours are available to assign.

Rule one puts B first: the family has no water until it is done, 12 hours. Rule two puts D, A's close-up and C's close-up next: an unanchored condenser is a projectile and the other two are open holes, so 5 plus 10 plus 6 is 21 hours. The committed total is 12 plus 21, or 33 crew-hours, inside the 45 available.

Can A be finished instead of dried in? That swaps its 10 close-up hours for 40 finish hours, adding 30 and bringing the total to 63. That is more than the 60 crew-hours that exist before stand-down, let alone the 45 assignable, with nothing left for a forecast that moves or a deck that needs sheathing replaced under the tear-off. A is dried in. On the 33-hour plan, 60 minus 33 leaves 27 crew-hours unassigned, which is the margin for the first thing that goes wrong. On Tuesday afternoon, ahead of plan with all four jobs closed, the shop uses some of that margin to start shingling A's dried-in half from the bottom, stopping by Wednesday's stand-down whatever state it is in, since the membrane under it is already the storm layer, with any unopened bundles brought down before the crew leaves.

What would change it. If the forecast moved arrival 12 hours earlier, the stand-down moves to Tuesday at midnight; with Tuesday as the last full day, available hours drop to 2 days times 8 times 3, or 48, and the usable 75 percent to 36, still enough for the 33-hour plan with 3 hours to spare before the reserve. If C's homeowners were living in the house with the wall open, its close-up would move up with B, under rule one.

References

• National Hurricane Center forecast products, including the arrival time of tropical-storm-force winds.
• 29 CFR 1926.501(b)(13), fall protection in residential construction; equipment manufacturers' wind limits and storage instructions.
• Your plumbing, fuel gas and electrical codes as adopted, for test requirements before systems are restored.
• See related: Weather Turns Mid-Job: Tarp Vs Stop Vs Finish Decision Tree; Roof Penetrations and the Secondary Water Barrier; The Pre-Storm Customer Outreach SOP; The Post-Event Equipment Inspection SOP.