The phone fills up after a storm. Every caller wants a truck, but roofing storm damage leads can mean a live hazard, a temporary cover, an inspection, a defined repair or no job at all.
Treat each call as a dispatch decision. Find the danger first. Confirm who can approve the work. Check whether the roof can be reached safely. Then book one clear task.
Sort roofing storm damage leads before sending a truck
Do not leave a storm damage enquiry marked urgent with no defined scope. Put it into a dispatch lane that tells the office what happens next.
Use these lanes:
- Emergency referral: people, electrical equipment or the structure may be in immediate danger.
- Temporary protection: limited work to reduce water entry or secure loose material.
- Inspection: the defect, access method or repair method is still unclear.
- Quote-ready repair: the area, method, access, materials and authorizer are known.
- Follow-up: you need photographs, authority, property details or safer conditions.
- Decline: the job sits outside your service area, scope, capacity or safe working limits.
Record the lane in the lead file. Give it an owner and a next action. An accepted lead might need an inspection call. A declined lead needs a reason, not a vague lost label.
Check service area, work type, crew capacity and customer timing before committing a truck. A possible repair is not automatically a sensible dispatch.
Run the immediate-hazard check first
Ask what is happening now. Not what the caller thinks caused it.
Ask whether material is falling, the ceiling is sagging, water is near electrical equipment or anyone is in immediate danger. Tell the caller to keep people away from the affected area and contact the proper emergency service when there is an immediate threat.
Do not ask a customer to climb a ladder, walk on the roof, enter a wet attic, touch electrical equipment or move loose roofing. Customer safety is not a condition of qualifying the lead.
Record the caller’s words as a report. Write caller reports water beside the rear bedroom light. Do not write storm damage confirmed. The condition stays unconfirmed until a competent person inspects it.
If the crew cannot attend safely, record why the dispatch changed. Weather, darkness, a steep wet roof or missing access equipment are job conditions. They are not reasons to improvise.
A crew might arrive for a reported missing-shingle repair and find a wet, steep roof with no suitable access equipment. Stop. Record what can be seen from a safe position and arrange the right equipment or a later visit.
Separate temporary protection, inspection and permanent repair
These are different jobs. Give each one its own scope and authorization.
Limit temporary protection
Temporary protection reduces immediate exposure. It does not promise a finished repair or confirm the cause of the leak.
Write what the crew may cover, secure or remove. State the access method, approved limit and finished condition. Exclude permanent repair unless the authorizer has approved it separately.
If the crew discovers more damage, stop at the approved boundary. Make the area safe only where the crew is authorized and able to do so. Send the new condition to the work authorizer.
Inspect when the repair method is unknown
Use a roof inspection booking when photographs and caller reports are not enough to choose the repair method. State whether the visit includes ground observations, accessible attic observations, roof access, measurements, photographs or a written report.
Tell the customer whether temporary protection is included. Do not let an inspection quietly become an open-ended repair call.
Quote only defined work
Send the job to estimating when you know the affected area, proposed method, access requirements, materials, disposal needs and exclusions. Confirm who can approve the price.
A close photograph of displaced covering does not make the work quote-ready. It may not show the deck, underlay, flashing, fasteners, surrounding deterioration or safe access route.
Use a roof repair lead checklist on every call
One intake record stops details from disappearing across calls, texts and crew notes. Use the same fields for every storm enquiry.
Keep the caller, owner, policyholder, access contact and work authorizer separate. They may be different people.
Lead reference: [Reference] Received: [Date and time] Property address: [Street, municipality, province or territory, postal code] Caller: [Name, role and contact details] Property owner: [Name and contact details] Access contact: [Name and contact details] Scope authorizer: [Name and contact details] Change order authorizer: [Name and contact details] Invoice recipient: [Name and billing details] Caller-reported event: [What the caller says happened] Active water entry or hazard: [Details] Affected area: [Room, elevation and roof section] Roof details: [Covering, height and pitch if known] Access restrictions: [Gates, parking, additions, lines, occupants] Photographs supplied: [File names, locations and capture times] Dispatch lane: [Emergency referral / temporary protection / inspection / quote-ready repair / follow-up / decline] Booked task: [Exact task] Excluded work: [What is not included] Crew and access equipment: [Requirements] Authorization: [Stage, authorizer, scope and limit] Next action: [Task, owner and due time] Outcome: [Current status]
Save the roof repair lead checklist under one reference. Carry that reference into the inspection, quote, work authorization, change order, invoice and cost record.
Do not combine lead source with lead outcome. Source tells you where the enquiry came from. Outcome tells you whether it was declined, inspected, quoted, won, lost, postponed or completed.
Request useful photographs without putting the caller at risk
Ask for ground-level exterior photographs and safe interior views. Tell the caller not to use a ladder, step onto the roof or lean out of a window.
Request photographs of:
- The full affected elevation from ground level.
- The roofline and visible displaced material.
- The ceiling or wall below the reported leak.
- Fallen material where it landed.
- The driveway, gates, decks, additions and access obstructions.
- Water entry from a safe position inside the building.
Ask the caller to label each image by location. Record when it was taken. Keep the original file with the lead record.
Photographs support triage. They cannot expose every concealed defect, prove the cause of damage or confirm that roof access is safe. Use them to choose the next visit, not to turn an assumption into a fact.
Confirm who can approve each part of the work
Permission to enter the property is separate from permission to spend money. Record the person granting access, the person approving the scope, the person accepting change orders and the party being invoiced.
A tenant may grant entry while the owner or property manager approves the inspection. A policyholder may speak with the insurer while another person approves permanent work. The invoice may go to the owner, property manager or another named party. Do not assume one contact controls every decision.
Record each person’s name, role, approved scope and spending limit. If the caller cannot identify the right authorizer, move the lead to follow-up rather than sending a crew into an argument.
Keep insurer communication factual. An insurer or adjuster requesting photographs, reports or pricing does not itself authorize you to inspect, protect or repair the property. Get approval from the person entitled to engage your business before proceeding.
Provide photographs, observed conditions, measurements, scope and pricing when authorized. Do not promise coverage, interpret the policy or state that the reported storm caused every defect.
Clear the Canadian authority check before booking
Route each question to the body that handles it. Do not ask one office to answer for another.
- Ask the provincial or territorial occupational health and safety authority about roof-work safety requirements where the property is located.
- Ask the provincial or territorial trade licensing authority which trade licence covers the proposed work.
- Ask the municipality about a business licence or building permit for that property.
- Ask the provincial or territorial workers’ compensation board about worker coverage.
Check the actual province, territory and municipality before promising the work. There is no single local answer for every Canadian property.
When the lead becomes billable work, ask the Canada Revenue Agency (opens in a new tab) about business number and GST/HST questions. Use your business’s proper tax treatment on the quote, change order and invoice. Do not copy a tax line from another contractor’s document.
Business-name and registration questions belong with your provincial or territorial business registry. Keep that check separate from a municipal business-licence question.
Write down the answer, the body contacted and the date. Then use that information to decide whether to book, change the scope or decline the work.
Make a roof-access go or no-go decision
Do not book roof access until the office has confirmed the planned access method, current roof and weather conditions, required equipment, crew capability, site hazards and authorization for the visit.
Mark the decision go or no-go. If one item is unknown or the crew cannot control the hazard, do not book roof access. Request more information, book safe ground observations or arrange the equipment and crew needed for another visit.
Define the roof inspection booking before the crew leaves
Write the visit scope before dispatch. The crew should know what it has permission to inspect and what record it must bring back.
State:
- The roof areas included.
- The planned access method.
- Whether accessible attic areas are included.
- The photographs and measurements required.
- Whether temporary protection is included.
- The written output the customer will receive.
- The areas and methods excluded.
Exclude concealed openings, destructive testing, lifting sound coverings, permanent repairs and inaccessible areas unless they have separate approval.
Tell the crew when to stop. New structural movement, wet electrical equipment, unsafe access, concealed damage or work outside the authorized area needs a fresh decision.
If opening is needed to diagnose the defect, price and authorize that investigation. Do not bury destructive work inside a general inspection description.
Record observed conditions without claiming an unproven cause
Split the inspection record into plain buckets:
- What the caller reported.
- What the inspector observed.
- What may be concealed.
- What appears to be older deterioration.
- What could not be accessed.
- What work the inspector recommends next.
Describe the material, location and condition. Write displaced covering on the rear slope beside the vent. Avoid broad statements that assign every visible condition to the reported storm.
The inspector may find displaced covering beside older flashing deterioration. Record both conditions. Do not merge them to make the paperwork shorter.
Mark concealed damage as suspected until the approved scope allows the crew to expose or test it. If further investigation needs different equipment or specialist work, quote that step.
The inspection record should also state what was not inspected. An inaccessible roof area is not a defect-free roof area.
Build the repair quote from the inspected scope
Choose the repair method first. Then price the labour, materials, access equipment, disposal, travel, subcontract work and other direct job costs.
Cost each authorized stage separately. Give temporary protection, inspection and permanent repair their own scope, labour, materials and actual costs. When a stage is finished, compare its actual cost with its approved price before pricing or starting the next one.
Recover overhead once. Either allocate it into the job cost before markup or recover it through the markup method used by your business. Do not count the same office or vehicle cost twice.
Markup is what you add to cost to produce the price. Margin is the profit left after cost as a share of that price. Use the guide to writing a quote to turn the inspection record into clear scope, assumptions and exclusions.
Write the roof area and task. Repair storm damage is too loose. State what will be removed, replaced, secured, flashed, disposed of and left finished.
Write assumptions about access, weather, matching materials, deck condition and concealed work. State that work outside the approved scope needs a written change order before it proceeds.
The Oak Street electrical job is the house example for document control. R. Chen at 14 Oak Street received quote Q-1847 for 1,105 sample currency units. It covered a 150 mm bathroom exhaust fan ducted through the roof and four LED downlights. The ceiling was lined, and the quote excluded chasing.
Extra cable and chasing became an approved 160 change order. Invoice INV-1847 was 1,265. The change was written and approved before the extra work was finished.
Job cost against the original quote was 850. Profit was 1,105 − 850 = 255. Margin was 255 ÷ 1,105, about 23%, while markup was 255 ÷ 850 = 30%.
The costs of the 160 change order are not provided. Do not calculate profit using the 1,265 invoice or combine that invoice with the 850 original job cost. These are sample currency units for a worked example, not roofing rates.
Use the quote template when the inspected repair needs a clean document with scope, exclusions and approval fields.
Track roofing storm damage leads through the finished job
Record where the call came from and what the office booked. Then record whether the quote was accepted and whether the finished work made money.
For cost tracking, use actual labour, materials, equipment, subcontract work and other direct costs from the completed job. Compare them with the quoted scope. The job-costing guide for contractor records explains how to make that comparison without mixing estimates and actual costs.
Record why a lead did not become work. Outside area, no authority, unsafe access, postponed inspection, customer declined and no response are different outcomes. Keep them different so the next dispatch decision uses clean records.
For roofing storm damage leads still in progress, set one next action before closing the record for the day. Call back. Request authority. Book the inspection. Prepare the quote. Arrange safe access. Or decline the work with a clear reason.