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UK Insurance & Aerial Inspection - a brief overview

Joined
Jan 14, 2018
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Hi all, you're here probably because you are
1. in the UK and/or
2. trying to figure out how to get in with insurers to gain work.

This stuff applies to the US too, to a degree. Not sure about prices though.

Most insurance brokers are selling the products, they are not necessarily the people to try to seal the deal with. The people you want to talk to are the insurance loss assessors (who work on the CLIENTS behalf), or the loss adjustors (who work on the insurance companies behalf).

Sometimes, you might strike gold and find someone who does one of these jobs and will use your services to inspect dangerous of tricky to reach areas. This is great! Just make sure to keep them on board by not overpricing things- do your research and find out how much scaffolding firms charge in your area.

You can pitch your service by mentioning a few things:
1. Labour costs
2. Construction costs (Often £500+ to put scaffold rigs up, but this varies)
3. Ongoing rental costs (can be extreme)
4. Your inspection with the drone can save them a lot of unneeded labour and scaf rental.
5. They have high quality images to work with from the get go, not 2 or 3 days after the scaffold people finally get their act together and after that someone gets up there and takes a look, with or without a camera.

Makes sense doesn't it!?! What's more, insurance inspections shouldn't be costing less than around £320 for a straightforward job - this is sometimes what people charge for a whole video shoot and edit which takes days and days... this is done inside an hour and it's usually paid on the day.

We charge a flight planning fee of £80 that is deducted from the overall costs, and it applies for a second flight too, therefore a second inspection would be £240, sweetening the deal and ideally bringing additional business in future.

If you are interested in insurance inspection, comment on this thread and we'll open the discussion.

I am planning a few things to aid insurers in procuring aerial services in the not too distant future, if anyone has ideas bouncing around, feel free to contact me to aid the discussions.
 
Keep me posted please Bigfoot, although I am currently based in Ireland I am in the UK quite a lot and expect to pick up work there.
 
Great post, thank you. I'm just starting up a part time small business and have a couple of weddings scheduled later in the year. I'm offering inspections but much like the wedding stuff have no idea how to reasonably price a job, at the moment I'm pricing to cover costs/time just to get my portfolio built up.
 
Keep me posted please Bigfoot, although I am currently based in Ireland I am in the UK quite a lot and expect to pick up work there.
Does you IAA certification not prohibit you from operating in the UK?
You would need to hold UK specific PfCO (along with the insurance persuant to EC785/2004)
 
I do a few insurance jobs, mostly following storm damage. I charge £500 straight up and they don't bat an eyelid. I am not marketing heavily because I am not a computer and internet guru... I struggle to work faecesbook and have given up trying to work out how instascam works! My approach is direct, the old fashioned way by actually knocking on doors in a suit and tie. It works.
 

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