Jane Doe, a fire survivor
A friend and I invented a client for the services outlined in my website.
She is Jane Doe, a fire survivor and we are writing back and forth to get started on her settlement and hire a contractor.
I’m writing her as she starts her journey toward rebuilding.
Dear Jane,
I’m glad you found my website and messaged me. I thought I’d talk a little about what I want you to know about my company and what my services can do.
Everything changed in my work on January 7th. Feeling helpless, I watched both fires from our house in Silver Lake. Huge black clouds blocked out the sun and ash was falling on our house. We packed up what we could, especially family photos, but we were just outside the evacuation zone and we just watched the news about the fires in fear, sadness and worry. I knew my work would never be the same. Happily my home and my family were unscathed.
Since then I have tried to make sense of the disaster and the possibility of my career being changed permanently. As it was, in January, I was considering retirement. I had just finished two large assignments and was exhausted. I had spent nearly 50 years in dispute resolution in construction. But, I wanted to find the folks who had suffered the loss of their home and community in this disaster to offer my experience in the construction industry.
I had worked on fire damaged homes and settled insurance claims for dozens of families displaced by the Oakland fire of 1991 and others. I was shocked to experience the sense of loss in their lives. It particularly hit me when I was inspecting a part of a claim using a photo of a family wedding in front of a fireplace in a living room of a wonderful Spanish-style home in Oakland. When I got there, I discovered the fireplace 10 feet in the air because it was on a second floor and the entire house had vanished above me. The sense of loss is still with me today. Now, you and thousands of people, who, like the bride in the photo, were not prepared or experienced in that kind of loss and need help. I empathize with your loss and respect the enormity of it.
My my website is intended to give you an understanding of how I can be of use to you as you rebuild your home and life. The rebuilding of a home has many hurdles, even the best of projects have hurdles; It is just in the nature of this size of endeavor. So now, I have designed a service to give you just the right tools at just the right time to clear these predictable hurdles. I am offering the wise advice from someone who has seen most everything at least once.
I provide the services of an Owner’s Representative, an OR. I am not an advocate (that is your attorney) but someone to give you the facts and knowledge of the common practice in the construction industry to handle the hurdles in front of you. I’m sort of a construction coach, if you will.
The reason to engage my services is that I can save you money when possible but keep my role minimum to avoid adding to the cost of the project. Just last year, I saved a client double my fee on a half million dollar retaining wall project. Let me keep an eye on your project for you.
Sincerely, John Donley
