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A RocketLevel guide, backed by decades of experience in the trade. About a 5-minute read.
Ask an owner why they haven't pushed into commercial and you often hear the same picture: a 40,000-square-foot hospital flood, a desiccant fleet they don't own, a national footprint they can't staff. That image is real, but it's rare. In RocketLevel's experience, most commercial work looks a lot more like the work you already do.
The everyday commercial loss looks like this:
These are the same water, fire, and mitigation skills you run every week. What changes is the decision maker (a property manager, a facility director, an owner) and the paperwork they expect. The physics of the job stays the same.
Two of those buildings carry duties a house does not, so know them before you take the call.
Medical and dental offices. In a dental or medical office, get the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) trigger right rather than assuming the worst. Simply being able to see protected health information does not make you a business associate. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) names janitorial and electrician services as providers whose functions do not involve using or disclosing that information, where access is incidental and no agreement is required, and ordinary mitigation that never takes custody of records sits there. What crosses the line is taking custody: packing out a records room, drying wet charts, or storing files in your warehouse puts you inside the business associate definition at 45 CFR 160.103, and 45 CFR 164.502(e) then requires a signed agreement before the records move. Either way, run the camera discipline that keeps charts and screens out of frame, because that costs you nothing.
Asbestos on any commercial building. EPA's asbestos rule requires a thorough inspection before any demolition or renovation, with no square-footage floor and no building-age cutoff (40 CFR 61.145(a)). The 160-square-foot and 260-linear-foot figures you will see in that same section set when notification and work-practice rules kick in, not whether you inspect. The federal rule does not require that inspection on a single-family home. Neither duty is hard, but both cost real money if you learn them on the job.
Going commercial doesn't mean dropping residential, hiring a sales team, or buying a warehouse of desiccants. You can: