Grounded

We have logged millions of airmiles during our careers to meet with clients and inspect assets, and we expected to add to that total this year.  The pandemic has temporarily put an end to that, having slowed the economy to a crawl and even more drastically impaired our ability to travel worldwide for our clients.  The silver lining is that being home more has provided us the opportunity to be with our families more, assisting in new roles, from sous chef and dishwasher, to math tutor and PE coach, among others. 

But we do have a business to run and clients to support, so how have we pivoted to continue serving business clients while “sitting behind” a desk?  Our projects over the past eight weeks have looked like this:

  • A specialty cleaning service company provided us pictures and videos with narration of the equipment and production lines we were valuing.  Along with AutoCad layouts, capitalized cost data, and some extra diligence by us and the client, we met audit needs and pieced together the analysis.
  • A consumer products company is distributing our detailed building questionnaire to its multi-national locations.  The questionnaire we developed leads the site personnel via customize-tailored asset options to guide them through providing specifics on construction materials, interior finishes, and HVAC systems.  This, along with ground level and aerial photographs, will allow us to calculate replacement costs of the buildings.
  • An automotive parts manufacturer that had been idled, unlocked the doors to their facility. So, we got in the car and logged some windshield time to make a social distanced inspection.
  • A food manufacturer provided photos and videos of their assets.  Three Zoom calls later it felt like we physically visited the facility.

Numerous other projects consisted of desk-top, indirect cost approach analysis.  This is where the historical costs and historical dates are used as the basis to calculate market values.  Once again, phone conversations and video conferences allowed for additional understanding of the assets. As businesses and governments begin to open up, we’ve started to have conversations with clients about when traditional site inspections will be appropriate.  We’ll continue to monitor the situation to ensure our next steps are informed by what makes sense for everyone’s health, safety and business needs.  Until then, we’ll consult on each individual circumstance to come up with a client-centric solution that will allow us to produce accurate values.